Moms were made of sterner stuff back then! Amen to drying clothes outside-I do- but only in the good weather-the rest of the time most of the clothes go into the dryer-except for some stuff that gets placed on the wooden rack or on hangers placed on the shower rod....ah the good old days!

You don't hear me complaining. Of course, I live in a place where we have about 300 sunny days per year (our current Portland-like weather is a decided anomaly, as we've had one whole sunny day over the last three weeks), so setting out the laundry in a typical Texas summer requires getting up early. The good news is that after setting up the last of the laundry on a July day, one quick cup of coffee later, it's already dry.

And picking up wet heavy clothes, hand-cranking through the wringer, bending down to stack in the basket and then carrying the basket to the line, bending again to pull out and reaching up to pin wet clothes to the rope, was healthy to boot. Didn't need treadmills or exercise videos.

And Dad wasn't left out -- first task on rising in the morning was to shovel coal out of the bin into the furnace.

When the weather is good why not hang it out to dry, it's making a come back as a green thing to do.

The only problem that I've been hearing is many homeowner association say it's against the rules. Somehow they think laundry drying is ugly and will drive down property values.

Yeah, my mom did the same in Cicero IL. We lived on the second floor of a 2 flat and she had to schlep clothes up and down two flights of stairs. My sister and I helped with collecting the dry clothes, or as you had, the frozen ones. Fingers got caught at times in the wringer but the proverbial ...s in a wringer never happened (AFAIK!).

The first floor, grandmas home, was heated at first by coal, then later the furnace was converted to oil. Out little flat was heated with an oil stove. My dad had to carry 5 gallons of oil from the garage every winter morning, fill the tank, let a pool of oil collect at the bottom, light it and carefully adjust the oil feed once it came up to temp. The he left for his job at the Surface Lines in Chicago, later to be called CTA.

"Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end..."

"homeowner association say it's against the rules."

Those self-appointed busybodies need to get the stick out of their you-know-whats. It has been argued that the restrictions they place on people's use and enjoyment of property (thinking back to 1st yr property w/pof Cameron at WUCL I think the term was restraints on alienation)alos lowers property values.

alos= also and pof= prof

my bad

"Somehow they think laundry drying is ugly and will drive down property values."

It's not "ugliness." It's a class/status signifier (which some people will conflate with ugliness, but whatever). If you could afford an electric dryer you didn't need to hang your laundry, ergo people with hanging laundry were those who could not afford electric dryers and were not the type of people with whom one should associate. Did you see Old Man Henderson's underwear hanging on the line the other day? So declasse.

Nowadays, hanging clothes on the line should be seen as a symbol of leisure, and therefore a status signifier. If you have time to hang your clothes out, as opposed to quickly shoving them into the dryer, you must be doing all right. (Or else you're out of work.)

Lawrence, my uncle worked for the CTA as well, before buses he drove streetcars on now long-abandoned lines -- 'er I mean those things that spur development due to their permanence.

My parent's first house was a little cape cod in SE Portland off 104th & Holgate. It had no basement and only room for a washer in the kitchen (no dishwasher either). My mom who also worked as a house keeper did all the laundry and she hung it outside on a clothes line. On rainy days she hung it in the attic which was unfinished at the time. My folks had a garage built for the outrageous price of $750 in 1955. The garage had a side porch which was the new place to hang the laundry. The attic got finished that year and was the new den. I do remember, however after my folks moved into their dream house which had a clothes dryer that my underwear was a lot softer. I don't know if I ever want to give up that softness in my old age, so screw global warming.