A Country Bumpkin Offering Sunshine

Every Sunday, feeding quarters to the washer and dryer in a public laundry room becomes harder and harder as our financial situation stays pretty shaky. Lately, I have to selectively hang some heavier clothes on the door frames between our living room and kitchen and between our bedroom and kitchen to save extra $1.25 to dry one more load. This new way to save money reminds me that people don't normally have dryers to dry clothes in Asia but hang them in the backyards or apartment balconies. It is not too much about being poor or rich but more from a stand point of utilizing nature energy. If I had a balcony that is designed to face inside an apartment building with sunlight exposure(not visible from the streets), I would naturally dry my clothes no matter I have money or not.

In California, the climate is perfect for people to dry their clothes by sunlight and wind; the low humidity year around makes clothes dry faster than in most of counties in Asia. However, there is very little support for naturally hanging clothes in most of apartment building or housing designs in California. I think people are very used to electronic machines and lost our senses of using natural free resources. It is probably impossible to conquer American people's bias-hanging clothes in backyards is low/no class. Understandably, no civilized people want to see other people's underwear hanging outside to ruin the street sight. Still, there must be something California residential architects can do to provide the space of hanging clothes to dry and protect the street/city view at the same time.

I cannot help being curious about how much CO2 we can reduce producing all together by stopping using a clothes dryer of every household; on the top of the energy waste, the dirty air released by each clothes dryer is not good for the environment either. So far, I haven't seen any Californian hang-dry clothes except people in Chinatown. Don't get me wrong. I don't appreciate the way people hang their private underpants over the windows facing the streets in Chinatown either. I have to think the way hanging my damp clothes inside my rental apartment doesn't bother any one but my husband is necessarily saving energy and money. Otherwise, it is depressing to count nickels and dimes in this difficult time.