Challenging the Status Quo

" “I figured trailer parks were the one place left where hanging your laundry was actually still allowed,” she said, standing in front of her tidy yellow mobile home on an impeccably manicured lawn.

But she was wrong. Like the majority of the 60 million people who now live in the country’s roughly 300,000 private communities, Ms. Saylor was forbidden to dry her laundry outside because many people viewed it as an eyesore, not unlike storing junk cars in driveways, and a marker of poverty that lowers property values. "

This is from a recent article in the New York Times about the growing debate about line-drying clothes. Yes, you read that correctly, there is a debate in the nation about naturally drying clothes outside ones house. Apparently there is some sort of cost-benefit analysis that is taking place, comparing the negative effects of having laundry outside a house on property values with the positive environmental benefits of not consuming electricity to dry clothes.

From my standpoint, this is a pretty simple call - if we can dry clothes through real, original solar power, why not? Yet, for many people in this country, line-drying clothes is an overt display of poverty. This, to me, highlights the necessity for us in this country to really re-evaluate our priorities and our perspectives. Why?

Well, the debate isn't even about the quality of drying provided by the two methods (which is debatable... I personally LOVE the feeling of fluffy dryer-dried towels, but others swear by the fresh-scent of line-drying). This would be a debate I could get into. But this is not the debate. The debate has devolved into "eyesore of not." Are we really looking at this issue of wasted resources as a trade off for our own vanity? Do line-dried clothes in a yard actually affect the quality of living in a neighborhood? Would a better solution to this issue not be changing our perspective so that we no longer equated things like laundry-free yards and green grass lawns (another huge resource waste in arid areas like LA, Las Vegas, and Phoenix) with wealth and status?

Let's get down to the heart of matters and stop skirting the issue. We attach way to much importance to things that are outdated and actually unimportant. I'm pretty sure that you can still enjoy watch "Real Housewives of Atlanta" with your neighbor's laundry hanging in the yard next door, flitting in the wind next to your window. I mean, we actively choose to watch other people's dirty laundry on TV all the time, what's wrong with some clean laundry next door?