A few days ago, I hung another clothesline on the back side of our house. As I put in the hour or so of work to hang this line, I reflected on the fact that we have a propane-fueled dryer in the house that we will use very rarely all spring and summer.
If you break down my salary, I make $21 per hour (before taxes). Even with the price of propane high enough that people complain--though: when did they not complain about the price of propane?--it is more cost-effective for us, hour per hour, to put the clothes in the dryer and let the propane do the work.
Yet, we have chosen the more labor-intensive route: to hang clothes on a line as long as weather allows. We have chosen a lower-tech solution to our clothes-drying needs, not because it's easier or cheaper, for it is neither of those. Rather, we have chosen simplicity over complexity: the use of already-moving air to the option of heating air in a manufactured cylinder and tumbling it until the buzzer goes off. I could tell you that we're trying to "go green," but that would be a half-truth. A better way to put it is that we're trying to use what the Lord has given us already (hands, feet, time, and wind) instead of what has to be trucked in to us and stored in a 500-gallon metal bottle in the back yard.
We're not getting rid of our propane--far from it. But in this little corner of our lives, we're living with more simplicity.
From another perspective: I enjoyed the challenge of putting up the clothesline more than the challenge of fixing the dryer.
~emrys
2 comments:
However - it's given the fact that I'm making $.02/hour which makes it cost effective - worth my time... since usually I'm the one hanging the laundry anyway!
Sarah thinks that looks like a cool tight rope. I had to break the news to her that it is a clothesline.
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