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["Gloria Morris" <gloriamorris59 AT gmail.com>]

I love wind and sun dried clothes and linens. There is nothing so
luxuriously absorbent and back-scratchingly satisfying as towels off
the line. Sheets are so nice and crisp, too. At my previous homestead,
I had a large set of clotheslines, and I used it much of the year,
except when it was raining. In rainy weather, I had it set up to hang
dry much of the laundry indoors rather than use a dryer. The indoor
system did not have the benefits of that outdoor, dried-in-the-sun
smell, though. Line drying saves a lot of energy, and the feel and
smell of laundry coming off the line simply cannot be beat. My next
home will have another clothesline, for sure!

Washing machines certainly use energy. I do some laundry by hand, but
the vast majority goes through a machine. In winter, central Illinois
gets a lot of wind energy, and in the summer we have abundant solar
energy. I subscribed to Home Power magazine for a while, and I looked
very hard into setting up a hybrid solar and wind system with battery
back-up. I also looked into government subsidies for such systems,
but, at least at that time, and for my budget, I couldn't quite swing
it. Unless you set up for DC power, you've got to get an inverter at a
minimum. If you like electronics, the higher priced inverters supply
fussy electronics with the power they want.

Gloria

On 11/19/06, Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/06, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Remind me again where you are, Marie..
> > My first thought on using the wind was a clothesline..lol
> >
> I love wind-dried clothes and I really do need to put up a clothes
> line. For whatever reason, my late, great spouse hated clothes lines
> and took ours out. I didn't complain at the time since he was doing
> much of the laundry.
>
> I live in central Illinois on top of one of the higher spots in the
> country and we almost always have a breeze and often a stiff wind.