Zen and the Art of Laundry

Lace and Laundry by Carol Apple

So I've been wanting to blog about laundry.

I kept putting it off because well, laundry might not be as thrilling to you as it is to me. I wasn't sure I could express my feelings properly. The ideas weren't flowing.

Then I saw this drawing on my friend Carol's Face Book page, and it totally inspired me.  It embodies everything I feel and want to say about hanging clothes on the line. The wistful look on the girl's face, the beautiful sky and the clothes swaying in the breeze....

It's perfect.  I love this drawing. I love Carol's art.  I want to be the girls in her drawings. There is something about them....

Carol is a writer who "doodles." At least that is what she calls it. But so many
of us have told her this is real ART, that I think she finally got the message. She recently launched her blog Scribbleflowers, where she shows us some of her drawings and chit chats about art, in layman's terms. She brings art to a level we can all understand and maybe believe we can do it too. Or at least try our hand at it and enjoy the process. I hope you will take a minute to go visit her over at Scribbleflowers when you are done here!

So back to laundry. I don't have anything profound to say about it really. The actually process of washing--loading the dirty clothes into the hamper, filling the washer with water and soap, putting the clothes in...it's all very mundane. But somehow satisfying. It's the only chore that sort of does itself while you can go do something else. All you have to do is start it up. Then the washer does the rest. Aren't we lucky we no longer have to use one of THESE?

Okay you say, but you still have to dry and fold. Yea, I know. But if you have a dryer, that's still a machine doing the work for you. And all that folding can be done by those other people who live in your house and need more chores to do.

Back to my original thought...... the clothesline! Do you have one? I know, this sounds like work and we were just talking about letting machines do all the work. But this is a chore I never mind doing. Hanging your wash on the line takes laundry to a whole new level. Instead of a chore, it becomes an act of meditation.

There is something about taking my basket of laundry outside, being in the fresh air, and one by one, pinning each article of clothing up on the line. Clothespins are  just so old fashioned, and I love that. They are so simple and they do the job just the way they are meant to. If they break, you just grab another. No need to send it to a repair shop.

Now, I don't dry all my clothes on the line. In fact, the only ones I do are things that won't wrinkle or get so stiff that you can't wear them. Most of my sons' clothes fall into this category. And bed sheets. Those are my favorite to hang on the line. They dry very quickly, and you just can't beat the wonderful scent of sun and fresh air that lingers on them when you bring them inside. I don't know how sunshine has a scent, but it does.

And if that isn't incentive enough, for those of you who are "green," this is the ultimate way to be good to the environment. Only wind and solar energy required. Good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. It's a win/win situation.

That's all I have to say about laundry. Oh, except if you are going to hang your clothes on the line, make sure it isn't going to rain that day. I have forgotten this rule on several occasions.

The song I leave you with has nothing to do with laundry. I know the obvious song would be "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley, but honestly, I can't stand that song. And this one by the totally awesome band, The Hollies is actually the song that has been in my head while writing this. Things are not always logical up there. In fact, they rarely are. "The Air That I Breathe" makes perfect sense to me...