Drying clothes and saving electricity

Living in this era where everything seems to run on electricity one shouldn't be too surprised if one day people are confronted with problems of high bills and the rapid depletion of natural resources.

Here is one good example, San Francisco, in California, will lower thermostats and turn off lights to save energy, but don't ask them to string up their socks and underwear in the back of the garden.

Drying clothes outside is one of a number of power conservation measures suggested by the Californian Energy Commission. "It's just unsightly", said Linda Appleton, who heads the board of directors at Blackhawk Homeowners Association.

"When you see clothes drying outside you think of slums", said Richard Monson, president of the Pasadena-based California Association of Homeowners Association. It's akin to graffiti in your neighborhood", claiming the unsightly undergarments could send property prices plummeting.

Now I can't understand what the actual problem is. Some 50 years ago when we lived in the Netherlands, which was still surviving from the aftermath of World War II, the only tap water in the home came from the kitchen. A bathroom didn't exist; only a small toilet. So, washing clothes or dishes was in the kitchen sink and during winters in (ice) cold water.

Drying dozens of extra baby napkins every day was around the home's only stove in the living room which was filled with a bag of coal briquettes (better-to-do people had a hearth with real coal). Summer drying was done outside the window.

For years it had been parents who reminded their children: "Switch off the lights when you leave your room".

Now, after the luxury of years of electric machines doing all our washing and drying, the time has come for people to start mentioning saving electricity.

Pampered by all types of electrical conveniences it is going to take its toll and force us to find alternatives. My proposal is this: Return to nature. A modified hanger of the 1950s. A box made of light and strong, rustfree metal like aluminum, so long as the width of the window, 60cm to 80cm wide and some 80cm deep. Lined with netting so that socks or underwear can't drop off and decorated with strings of leaves and colored in green or white.

Attached to one of the rear windows of each apartment, in uniform design and color, can you imagine how attractive it would look like on a highrise apartment building?

Who knows it might even be called a novelty and a laundry balcony you could be proud of.

NETTY MULIA

Jakarta