[Greenbuilding] drying clothes

[Susan Kramer]

I see not using the dryer as a way to save money.  Everything costs....
Susan
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Reuben Deumling 
  To: Green Building 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 12:44 PM
  Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] drying clothes





  On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Racheli Gai <racheli at sonoracohousing.com> wrote:



    But it's also important not to assume that arguing against the use of dryers necessarily means that people are claiming "moral superiority". 

  Racheli, well said! 


  The problem I'm concerned with is that energy-efficiency-as-policy suggests that we can skip this conversation altogether, as long as we're buying energy efficient products. 

  I don't know if not having a dryer is morally superior or not. I'll leave that for future generations to determine.  If one has (gotten used to using) a clothes dryer, figuring out what steps to take to get by without a machine to dry one's laundry, though, seems like a prudent direction in which to move, all things considered. 

  Saying 'I/we/people I know who live on the fifteenth floor of a posh building in Hong Kong dry my/our/their clothes clothes without a machine' can also, I think, be appreciated as opening up a space for others who may rely on a clothes dryer to consider this as a possibility. The assumption that this statement is necessarily made within a moral framework, by which I think some people mean 'I am being lectured at and I resent that,' may reflect as much or more about the hearer than the speaker.

  As for apartments or living in cities, people dry their clothes the world over under those circumstances--without machines. Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Bangkok, Hong Kong, London... I don't know the distribution of clothes dryers in those particular cities but believe that (a) on average the available space is if anything lower per capita there than what many of us who live in US cities are used to, and (b) they also do *much* less laundry than some of us have gotten used to doing.

  The challenge as I see it is to identify or re-discover practical, cheap (vernacular) ways of accomplishing our domestic routines with fewer (eventually no) fossil fuels. As Amory Lovins said thirty five years ago: 
  "A society cannot aspire to be both conspicuously consumptive and elegantly frugal. The hard and soft paths are culturally and institutionally antagonistic, and furthermore, compete for the same limited resources."  The Energy Controversy: Soft Path Questions & Answers p. 5 

  Reuben Deumling



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