Solar and wind power are all the rage, yet I am banned from using them to dry my clothes. And no need to spend thousands on solar panels or windmills -- just a few bucks to run a clothesline. A what? A clothesline! Apparently it's cutting-edge technology -- yet it's been around for hundreds and thousands of years.
So what happened to clotheslines? For years, people managed to dry their clothes, bedding and towels using solar and wind power -- in other words, outdoors. I lived in Tokyo for 14 years and never had a clothes dryer. I lived in apartments and had a washer, but as with most Japanese in cramped quarters, I managed without a dryer. Japanese apartment balconies come equipped with staggered hooks on which you can hang poles to dry your laundry.
Tokyo and other Asian cities are festooned with drying clothes and bedding, yet my strata here in Burnaby, British Columbia, actually forbids drying clothes on balconies.
I wonder how much energy could be saved simply by drying clothes outside? Oh, you say it's too wet here? Well, Japan has a long, humid rainy season in the late spring/early summer, a typhoon season in the fall, and darn cold weather in the winter. Yet 110 million people there somehow manage to get by with very few of them having clothes dryers.
British Columbia should amend the Strata Act to ban stratas from banning balcony clothes drying.
Posted by Paul at January 7, 2008 08:00 PM