“There is a blessing in the air”
– William Wordsworth
In the winter we quickly realized that line drying was to be a collaborative effort for us and for the elements. While some weeks we hung the laundry beneath the sunny, beautiful Carolina sky there were others that brought gray thick clouds or the whipping freezing winds of winter. People new to line drying, including us, think that the sun is the only element contributing to the desired result of dry laundry however when you commit to render your gas or electric dryer obsolete you’re thrust into the awareness that the wind is an equally efficient drier. As welcome as the wind might be for completing your laundry, it can be brutal on the participant. Consider your hands are holding damp cloth, at winter temperatures now add the winds chill, fingers can go numb instantly.
Just for the record, I’m not crazy about the cold mostly because I don’t like winter jackets and I don’t have a “hat-head”. I grew up in the Northeast, so my sense of cold is different than Tonyas’. I’ll wear a sweater out when she has on three layers, a wool coat and a toboggan. Enough background, it was in one of our initial weeks of project 52, the wind was whipping and I was in my loungewear and slippers outside hanging laundry. I’m shivering and shaking, my eyes little puddles and here comes Tonya with the next load. After a bit of back and forth she insists, taking me inside to the sound of several sneezes. I add a coat, hat and gloves. Right than we made a pact that we would hang in tandem on days like this one. It was the awareness that in order to better care for the environment, we would have to take better care of us individually and each other. Doing so was in conscientious collaboration, the fringe benefit of lined dried laundry.
Andrea Angelo
