Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 08, 2024

And the Home Owners’ Association (HOA) police comes knocking on the door.

Very true, some will not allow it!!!

Any appliance that uses electrical resistance to heat things is gonna be an electricity hog. Space heaters are about the worst, but electric ranges aren’t far behind. Compare the energy efficiency of incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED lights for an outstanding example.

Before there were clothes dryers, people had no choice but to hang their laundry outside—where it was coated with soot from nearby factories!!

So that is Zonker’s father in panel two? I don’t recall seeing him previously. I don’t see any resemblance.

Unfortunately, drying clothes outside is severely stereotyped these days. My mom did it in the 80’s and the neighbors hated it.

When I was a kid we had a nice large basement with the luxury of a wringer washer. Then they dried outside in summer and inside the basement in winter. Mom and Gramma used a device called a pants stretcher that was inserted in pant legs to keep the legs straight for efficient drying and also eliminated the need to iron the legs…they left a nice sharp crease when collapsed and removed. Since both Dad and Grampa wore heavy khaki slacks it was a real time and labor saver.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Zonker’s dad before.

My (British) sister used to live in New Jersey and always used to dry her washing on the line outside (weather permitting). There was no HOA to complain about it, and her American mother-in-law always used to comment that the children’s clothes smelled much fresher than those from a dryer. The American social stigma around line drying being too “blue collar” is (or was) ridiculous. I wonder if it started with aggressive advertising from dryer manufacturers trying to guilt-trip people into buying their machines?

It’s always been a bafflement to Europeans that anyone would consider air-drying as anything other than a nice thing, even without the energy considerations. Once the UK weather ventures above 50F in March or so, the washing will be out on the line, sheets blowing in the wind – it’s just a lovely sight. I don’t kow whether that’s a learned aesthetic or if the members of American HOAs just get offended by the sight of other people’s underwear.

The HOA will get you for that!

before the term ‘karen’ was around

Send them to Mar-Al-Lago,they’ll find plenty of violations there

Actually, it’s probably the grow lights in the basement that are using all the electricity (Zonker’s start at entrepreneurial activities).

The new two jobs no children professionals were aghast at clothes on my umbrella clothesline until they became a young couple with 3 kids at the swimming pool daily.

Check out Brewster Rockit today for another take on this

A couple of months ago, I had my backyard clothesline restrung. I’s invaluable for sleeping bags and comforters; I figure my fences are high enough so that no one will grouse.

Soon after my wife and I married, we moved to Phoenix. We had a baby by this time, and decided to use cloth diapers since they were less expensive. We had a washer, but no dryer. We used a rotating umbrella-style clothesline. In the summer, my wife could hang diapers on one side of the line, and by the time she got done with the other three panels, the diapers were dry!

These folks are “sun drying” their skin right out in public. There has to be some rule about that, right? :)

I still favor a vacuum chamber. Should dry them quickly.

You couldn’t pay me to live in a neighborhood like that. I love hanging out the laundry!

My Mobile Home Community forbids Clothes Line Posts even though my lot has a concrete block embedded in the lawn specifically intended for that purpose. Rooftop broadcast TV antennas are also forbidden, but a court case got a ruling allowing Dish antennas, but only if you have liability insurance on your trailer.

That actually happened in Lansing Illinois. A person had been drying his/her clothes on a line for some time. Some looser rated her/him out.

That’s the way my mom used to do it.