Yesterday I enjoyed a reunion with two friends from my church in Evanston. Both Susanna and Leanna recently moved to England with their British husbands, and we three gathered as the Evanston expat girls for the first time. After meeting at the train station, we meandered to Nottingham's Market Square, where we basked in the hot sun eating McDonalds McFlurries and watching Susanna's toddler bound joyfully through the fountain.
"This is how summer is supposed to be," Susanna announced, gazing up at the hot, blue sky.
"Yeah, it's the first time since moving here in April that I haven't been cold," said Leanna.
"If you close your eyes," I said, listening to the happy shrieks of children and the splashing of the fountain, "it's almost like being in Millennium Park on a summer's day."
The others closed their eyes for a moment and nodded. Then Leanna brought us back to reality with the ever-present discussion about learning to live without a tumble dryer, which are rare in British households.
"Oh rats!" she exclaimed. "If I'd realized it was going to be sunny today, I would've washed the bedding and hung it outside to dry."
"I did that yesterday," I told them proudly. "It was so much easier to hang the sheets out on the line than draping them over doors or the kitchen table."
A little while later the sopping wet 2-year-old had thoroughly worn herself out, so Susanna led the protesting Kailey away from the fountain, changed her into dry clothes and put her into the stroller, where Kailey promptly fell asleep. We adults climbed Castle Mount to get a look at Nottingham Castle, then stopped for a pint at "Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem," which famously bills itself as the "oldest inn in England, ca. 1189."
After a half-hour walk to Leanna's house for dinner, laundry came up again. As she opened the front door, Leanna apologized about the drying rack propped up conspiculously in her small sitting room.
"I hope they're dry," Leanna said, rushing over to feel the towels, socks and t-shirts hanging on the rack. They weren't. Leanna sighed as she felt the damp clothes.
"I just fold them when they're still wet," Susanna said. "Sometimes it seems like they never dry."
Kailey, refreshed by her nap, ran over to the couch and amused us all by tucking a sock under her chin and busily "folding" it. After she'd created a little pile of crumpled damp socks on the couch, Leanna gathered them all up and headed out to her garden to hang them from the clothesline.
Susanna told us about the dryer her husband had thoughtfully found for their London house.
"I was so excited," she said. "Then I discovered it doesn't have a lint trap. So whenever a load gets dried, all the little bits stick around and get on the next batch of clothes. If I wash our brown and red towels, for example, the next load of laundry has brown and red fuzz all over it that I have to pick off."
It's easier, she says, just to avoid using the dryer altogether. She hangs her wet laundry out on drying racks in the downstairs bathroom.
I thought about all of this again today after I saw Susanna and Kailey onto the London train and hung out the newly washed spare room sheets to dry. It's been a simply stunning summer's day. The temperature isn't hot like yesterday, but pleasant, at about 70 degrees and breezy under a blue, blue sky.
I painstakingly draped the sheets over the clothesline and fastened them with clothespins, considering yesterday's conversations with other Americans and wondering if I'd ever simply lay out the wet clothes without weighing the pros and cons of a dryer-less society.
I've finally gotten used to hanging up my washing, whether it be on the clothesline on the best days or, most often, over radiators and drying racks about the house. Sometimes I miss the convenience of a dryer, but I know that someday I'll have one again. I've realized, in fact, that I'd like to keep up the habit when I am back in America with a clothes dryer at the ready. Will I be able to spurn the convenience and go the natural way? After all, I prefer to ride my bike, buy local foods and use cloth grocery bags. Skipping the tumble dryer is just another way to help care for this earth. In my arguments with my future self, however, I've given myself a loophole for very cold or wet days, especially if I'm doing laundry for a family. Yet I've come to realize this forced slow down is good for me. On busy days I am annoyed that it takes so long to put out my clothes, but even then I think, "This is what people used to do all of the time. They still do it around the world, just not back home."
And despite all of my complaining about this very topic, I think learning to hang up my wet laundry and, more importantly, fight the impatient urge to be more efficient, is one of the most valuable lessons I've learned in England.
I thought tumble dryers were quite common in the UK (they are in my locale).
Our dryer packed up 2 years ago and we decided to get a cheap clothes frame to hang our washing on; saving the planet (some of it) and a little money.
Central heating in winter and warm summers means that washing usually dries through in eight hours; start the wash in the morning and hang it up in the afternoon. There is no inconvenience, but we sometimes have to plan ahaead a bit.
Thanks, Tom. I just did a quick poll in my office...out of the 8 people here, only 3 have tumble dryers. Maybe it's something that's more common among an older, more established demographic, but almost nobody I know has one. When I just asked around, my friend Kristen said, "You just hang clothes out," and, while the house I live in used to have one, the homeowners said they never used it (despite having three kids) and so got rid of it. This is all very different from the U.S., where EVERYONE has a dryer. It's pretty much a non-negotiable.
You've confused me again - I admit it's been almost 10 years since I left the country I was born and raised in but I can only think of one time I didn't have a tumble dryer, and it was when I didn't have a washer either. Even my hard-up parents had one.
I personally though hung a lot of things out to dry when I lived in Europe, at least in the summer. The rest of the year I would simply use an indoor airer, as did pretty much everyone I knew. Most clothes aren't supposed to go in the dryer, whether you have one or not. Just towels, bed linens and underwear. And kids clothes since they are usually needed quicker than you can wait!
Apparently I live in some strange, dryer-less vortex! Still, I definitely see a difference in attitudes about this appliance. Your comment, Jennifer, that most clothes aren't supposed to go in the dryer, is an interesting contrast to the opinions of most Americans I know, who throw just about everything in the dryer, except for sweaters and some delicates. I suppose that's a symptom of our fast food, convenience culture as much as anything.
Yes drying takes the color out of your clothes (NEVER dry anything black unlesss it is an undergarment!), and dryer sheets are even worse, leaving a thin film of product all over your clothes which eventually eats away the fibers.
I hope that your current dryer-less existence will help you realise that clothes can be air-dried and still be wearable when you return to Chicago!