Nanny

I've got a secret... Our dryer went on the fritz weeks ago and I still haven't told our landlords, even though they only live upstairs (although they appear to have been out of town for most of the last couple of weeks). It conked out...I don't know...last month? I keep meaning to call them to get it fixed, but then I put it off...because secretly I love line-dried laundry. That's right: given a choice, I'd choose a clothesline over a dryer any day. Granted, it can be a bit of an inconvenience sometimes, especially when you live in a condo that's situated on one of the signature holes on the golf course and you don't have a yard or a clothesline. :)

The stacked washer/dryer unit we currently have used to belong to the landlords. They bequeathed it to us when they bought a new one last year. The dryer on our previous unit conked out a couple of years ago--right about this time of year. It had a broken belt, and I suspect this one has one, too.

We had a clothesline left over from our previous house (where I'd string it up along the picket fence of the balcony), so last time we were without a dryer, the boyfriend rigged up the clothesline along our long front balcony. But we couldn't very well hang laundry during the day; the condo association would have our ass. So we waited until dark and then hung it up. That time, I reported the problem to the landlords right away, but it still took them six weeks to fix it. (He owns an air conditioning and refrigeration business--the last thing he feels like doing when he gets home is fixing another appliance.) Since we live in the tropics, it wasn't unusual to get an overnight shower, which meant we'd often wake to laundry that was just as wet 12 hours later. But I'd still have to bring it in anyway before the golfers showed up. Not to mention that my brother brought his family of five and my mother for Thanksgiving that year. Try having eight people in a teensy condo....with no dryer. :(

This time I decided to just use the shower rod. It's extra-long because there's a planter box next to the tub. You might be wondering how fresh our laundry could smell hanging in our bathroom, but we have large windows on one side of the tub and one of them is permanently open (as are all of our sliders and windows). We can get a nice, gentle breeze through there. And sheets and linens? You'd be surprised how quickly sheets dry when hung over the tub (as you can see, there's a shower rod against the window, too) and how inventive I can be rigging up drying surfaces for blankets. So even though November was once again our rainiest month, this has been a breeze. And it's not like we're constantly doing laundry--it's just the two of us. The odd thing is, I seem to be keeping more on top of the laundry than when the dryer was working. When convenience is at your fingertips, I suppose it's easy to wait until you have a shitload of it to do.

I'm the first to admit that I have a bit of a Luddite soul, but that's not the only reason I've gone bass-ackwards in this area. The real reason is that it reminds me of Nanny, my Italian grandmother. She never owned a dryer. Heck, when I was little, she still owned one of those old-fashioned wringer washing machines. Her towels always had that stiff line-dried feel to them, but even better, they had that fresh smell. No softener or dryer sheets can recreate that smell.

I have fond memories of being in my grandmother's backyard and helping her hang or take down her laundry. It used to be a treat to 'get to' hang up the laundry. Her clotheline was right next to her rose bushes. And after I'd help with the laundry, I'd take a leisurely stroll among the roses (all different varieties), lean in and inhale their fragrance and rub my grimy kid fingers over their tender, soft petals.

Yes, I'll eventually get around to telling the landlords to fix our dryer. But in the meantime, it'll be just me and my clothespins (even though they're not evident in this picture, I use them all the time). And I'm perfectly fine with that. And I'll keep imagining my little dream house...with a big yard...and plenty of room for a clothesline. And when I have my clothesline, I'll stand before it, pinning my laundry...and take a moment to lift a sheet over my head to look at the sun through bright cotton. And once again, I'll be back there in the yard behind that little house on J Street that my Portugese grandfather built. And all will be right in my world...again.

Thanks to Sunday School Rebel for inspiring this post.