Lisa Sussman, NNN's Natural Mom, explores the benefits of solar energy as collected by a clothesline.

I have just finished the laundry and I am giddy with pleasure. No, I have not been sniffing the (non-chlorine) bleach. It’s just that the sun is out and that means line-dried clothes.

(Click on "More..." for the rest of the story, plus some unique pictures, which are sure to inspire you to turn off your dryer!)

Weather is a serious matter for me. No Monday’s chore for me. I schedule my washing days around the whims of the weekly forecast, constantly searching for the best drying day: sunny, breezy with at least a hint of warmth. Those are the days I lug my 20-pound load of wet laundry out to the backyard and start pinning.

Some days I get it wrong. My kids still laugh at the frozen jeans – they looked like the What Was I Scared Of pants from the Dr Seuss story. Then there was the time that I almost got a speeding ticket trying to race a thunderstorm to my backyard. I lost and I don’t think my quilt has ever quite forgiven me.

For long dark stretches over the winter, I am forced to resort to feeding the clothes dryer - whose wide mouth always seems to be begging for just one more pair of socks. But I am on to its game. Far too often, that sock will never be seen again, leaving a depressed mate sentenced to the rag pile, one wipe closer to the garbage.

Our clothesline is right in the middle of the yard, tethered between the chicken coop and the children’s climbing set. When the kids were younger, they used to play peek-a-boo with the sheets as they billowed in the wind. Now, they are just about tall enough to help with the hanging. And we do it my way.  

What I have discovered is that there are two types of people in the world: Those who have developed definite opinions as to how hang pants (creased, cuff end up), shirts versus tees (by the shoulders instead of the hem), what my grandmother used to call “unmentionables” (with two clips so there’s no telltale pinch and hidden way, way in the back) and so on. And then there’s my tribe: the why-hang-two-legs / sleeves-when-one-will-do-the-job-just-as-well group.

This is a problem when my in-laws visit. My husband long ago joined the willy-nilly hanging group, but his parents, bless ‘em,  are straight-cuff, every-corner-pinned clothesline people. They even hang their underwear in neat taut rows. They quietly tsk-tsk over my haphazard groupings of sheets with underwear, pj’s and dresses, work shirts with soccer jerseys. For them, this is the social equivalent of inviting Red Sox fans and Yankee fans to a BBQ – the two groups just don’t mix.

But in my mind, drying clothes isn’t like other household chores. Besides keeping track of my socks, I delight in the fresh crisp scent of air-dried clothes. Clothes that make it intact from the dryer have no more character than cottage cheese. The fact that the only energy my effort burns is calories is just icing on the cake. Clothes dryers eat up 6 percent of the electricity consumed by U.S. households and emit up to a ton of CO2 each year per household (check out laundrylist.org for more on the energy advantages of hanging laundry).

I love, too, what our clothesline tells about our lives. There are no secrets when you hang your clothes up to dry. The bright red tablecloth with the embroidery and the “fancy” cloth napkins reveal that company came for dinner. The big stain means that it was the klutzy cousin who always spills his wine. Extra sheets and towels divulge that they stayed the night. You can see how many children live in our house. Come next year, and you’ll know how much they’ve grown. Shorts and tees hung on a sunny snowy day are like snapshots of our winter get-away while a line of stuffed animals are a sure sign that spring cleaning is afoot. And donuts on the line signal there is a party going on!

Just going outside at different times of the day means you discover all sorts of things you might never have noticed. Like a cat using the line as a balancing wire. Or the squirrel who keeps stealing the wooden clothespins – perhaps to set up her own clothesline? Then there is the snapping turtle who waddles up from the stream annually to lay her eggs under the clothespin bag.

My clothesline also keeps me connected with generations of women had no choice but to lift, haul, pin and fold their clothes. It reminds me and my family that once upon a time, not too long ago, household chores were about using the elements of wind, water and sun. Labor savings and efficiency came not from appliances but from learned strategies, like drying the heaviest clothes in the heat of long summer days or putting up food on colder days to warm the house. Like quilting, knitting, baking bread or canning, hanging clothes on a line was a necessity, not a guilty pleasure.

However, unlike those arts, for some reason the humble clothesline has not cycled back into vogue. In fact, clotheslines are actually banned or restricted by many of the roughly 300,000 homeowners’ associations that set rules for some 60 million people. Perhaps it’s a case of bad PR – for some reason, a clothesline is always a symbol of poverty in films (see "Angela's Ashes," "Children of Men" and "Pearl Harbor,” to name a few).

So clothesline-dryers of the world unite! It’s time to whitewash the old image of the clothesline and hang out a bright new greener one. I’ll join you as soon as I finish hanging up these towels.