Clothesline advocates fight for right to dry

When it comes to drying laundry, Mimi White strives for simplicity.She strings her wash on a clothesline, letting the sun finish the job. She hasn't used an electric dryer for more than six months, and she says it's one of the easiest ways to live a greener life."You don't have to reinvent anything," said White, 60, a poet from Rye, N.H.. "It's an old idea -- it's been around forever."Although it is easy for White, it's not that simple for everyone. Nearly 60 million Americans live in areas governed by homeowners associations, and many associations ban clotheslines visible from the street for aesthetic reasons.In what some clothesline advocates call the fight for the "right to dry," several states have recently considered legislation -- some of it passed, some of it failed -- that would require homeowners associations to allow residents to have them. Last week Hawaii's Republican Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed such a bill, saying homeowners associations should have the authority to set their own covenants. The state legislature failed to override her veto.Colorado, Florida and Utah have outdoor drying laws."Basically, it empowers people to be energy efficient at home and use the energy of the sun to dry their clothes and to use less energy heating and cooling their homes," said one of the authors of Colorado's law, state Rep. Andrew Kerr, a Democrat from Jefferson County, near Denver.The Energy Information Administration estimated in 2001 that the average U.S. household uses 5.8 percent of its electricity on electric dryers. Substituting clotheslines saves homeowners money and is more environmentally friendly, said Alexander Lee, founder of the non-profit organization Project Laundry List, which educates people about the benefits of using clotheslines."Everybody has to do their laundry. This is about saving money -- it's simple," Lee said. "It provides people an opportunity to be outside and meet their neighbors, have some light exercise."Frank Rathbun, spokesman for the Community Associations Institute, said a homeowners association's main responsibilities are to maintain a community's property values and its appearance and continuity."When you buy into an association, you probably like the way it looks," he said. "You probably like the curb appeal. And if all of a sudden that changed in substantial ways, I would suspect a lot of homeowners would be very disappointed."Rathbun pointed out that homeowners association board members are elected, so if the majority of homeowners want clotheslines, the rules could change.In 2007, Zogby International, a public opinion research institute, polled 709 people living in community associations. Three-quarters opposed government rules about clotheslines, while 18 percent favored them.Brion Peterson, president of the Vista West IV Homeowners Association in Casper, Wyo., said Vista West has banned visible clotheslines for aesthetic reasons since its creation in 1976."They just kind of wanted to get away from suburbia-type 'every house has a clothesline' situation," he said.He said some residents own retractable clotheslines that can't be seen from the street, and he rarely gets complaints about those.The push for clotheslines is a logical first step to an effort to be environmentally friendly, said White, who is leading a project to paint clothesline poles around her New Hampshire town to make them look more attractive."I think that when you change a habit that's a fairly regular habit, such as hanging your clothes on a line, you slow down. You become aware of your behavior," she said. "I think that once you become aware of your behavior and your behavior has changed, then you will change in other ways."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)