Green with Children

Airing My Dirty Laundry

To green my laundry, I first started buying earth-friendly detergents, like Trader Joe's, Ecover, and BioKleen. (It was only after starting this blog that I learned about the environmental impact of our detergents and household cleansers.) In any case, I also buy powder instead of liquid to save water and shipping costs. Instead of chlorine bleach, I use oxygen bleach. Instead of dryer sheets, I use these lavender sachets from Trader Joe's. My clothes are as clean as ever, and they smell like I just walked through a French garden.

Next was the dryer. According to the Green Guide, line-drying a single load of clothes saves approximately 2.6 kWh of electricity and prevents 3.35 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Like so many aspects of change, whether it's greening my laundry or getting back in shape, I think about what I should do for weeks or months (or years) before I actually do anything. So when my neighbor Sonya shamed me by rigging up her own clothes on the drying line before me, it was finally time to turn thoughts into action.

So I bought a drying rack at Ikea for $16.99, washed my whites, and got to work. It was a crisp sunny day and the novelty of the drying rack had me more motivated to clean clothes.

I learned pretty quickly that there is a reason the dryer was invented. Several hours later, our clothes were still damp. I had run two more loads of laundry while the whites languidly hung in the breeze. It became clear that I would have to get this process started first thing in the morning if I intended to dry more than one load of clothing in a day. Or, I could have the drying rack in my backyard every day the weather permits.

The whole experience got me thinking about feminism. Doing the laundry used to be an all-day affair. To dry outdoors, on sunny non-humid days--the best days--one had to be close to home. Dryers freed up great quantities of time for women by making laundry something that could be done efficiently, day or night. That gave us time to focus on other things, like becoming lawyers, scientists and elected officials who fight for environmental justice.

I'm not saying using a clothesline or a drying rack isn't a great way to naturally brighten whites, conserve electricity and even preserve the quality of our clothing. I just think we have to weigh the benefits. And I'm also not saying that there aren't other moms out there who are much more virtuous or better at time management than I am. 

Furthermore, thanks to our conscientious landlord, our dryer is energy efficient, with a moisture-sensor setting so it stops when it senses the clothes are dry. Maybe we use less kWh? (whatever those are).

Environmentally friendly laundry detergents? That's a no-brainer. I won't stop using my drying rack (I just spent $16.99 on it, after all), but I'm not going to commit to never using my dryer again. I have better things to do with my time.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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