Location! Location! Location! That’s the house-hunting mantra.  Most people’s wish lists include number of bedrooms and bathrooms, updated kitchen, garage, nice yard.

Location is important, yes, but if clotheslines weren’t allowed in an area where there was a likely house, I wouldn’t even go inside…if I were house-hunting…which I’m not. I’ve never lived where I couldn’t hang clothes out to dry. Not for me are the newer homes that feature a laundry room “conveniently” near the bedrooms. Nunh uh. I want my laundry room near the back door. And it is.

Underwear excepted from clothesline display,
Sheets scented by the sun’s rays,
bottled.
Warm sunshine dreams on cold winter nights,
breezes freeze.

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The nature of laundry
Frances Reinus, 2008
I have never used a clothesline.
I am too young to know the nostalgia they induce.
I do not know the way a fresh-air-hung-dry
Article of clothing smells
Or feels.
I do know that the automatic dryer in my laundry room
Is faster
And easier
And you are guaranteed warmth upon donning a freshly dried article.
And you don’t need pins.
And you don’t need to fight your clothes
And tell them, “Stay, don’t wander in the wind!”
And that a dryer may be hidden in a closet
And not unsightly like those lines of clothes I have seen
Strung between city apartments
And in the back yards of the old-school.
And while they may be cheaper
They seem like too much work.
And I would rather look at the trees, the flowers, and the grass.

But I can look at trees, flowers and grass while I hang my laundry, cheaply. “Unsightly?” I think not! I envy this poet for her youth, but I’m sorry she has never experienced “fresh-air-hung-dry.”  “Old-school,” that’s me.

“The nature of laundry” ©Frances Reinus, 2008