Hanging out with air-drying advocate Alexander Lee '97.
By Sarah Tuff '95
Despite the harbingers of spring—Cadbury creme eggs in stores, sunset near 5:30—this gray February day in Concord, New Hampshire, is not meant for hanging laundry. A raw, persistent drizzle mists windshields and turns ice-covered driveways into skating rinks.
But Alexander Lee ’97 could give a hoot about the horrible weather. He’s just washed a load of corduroy pants and plaid shirts and instead of tossing them in a Maytag for 45 minutes of tumble dry, he has placed them neatly on a wooden rack in his Concord office and living quarters. “This is what I do in the winter,” says Lee. “It humidifies my house.”
Lee, however, is trying to do far more than improve the air in this first-floor Victorian apartment. He’s aiming to improve the air quality of the entire planet through advocating the simple act of hanging out clothes to dry.
Or is it so simple? As executive director of Project Laundry List, which Lee founded while at Middlebury, he airs his laundry with a global network of green-minded activists advocating their “right to dry.” The movement—which counts more than 2,000 committed individuals and 25,000 interested parties—pits panties against politicians, environment against aesthetics, fresh breezes against Bounce. Project Laundry List has drawn a line in the battle between eco-chic individuals and homeowners’ groups.
“It pushes buttons,” says Lee. “The more we can bring up the right to dry, the better; the real success of this is in educating the public and getting people interested in small environmental behavior changes which lead to bigger environmental changes.”
For Lee, 33, laundry fluttering from a clothesline has been a lifelong sight. “I grew up in a household in Brookline, Massachusetts, where we didn’t need to hang out our clothes as an economic necessity,” he says. “But my mother, as a point of pride, had always done so, and referred to herself as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, the washerwoman from Beatrix Potter.”
As the head of the College’s Environmental Quality student group for four years, Lee continued practicing small acts of sustainability: taking short showers, fasting, walking everywhere. He eventually wrote a three-part thesis that addressed simple living, environmental messaging, and a fictional “ecotopia.” But it was a campus visit by Helen Caldicott, a noted educator and antinuclear activist, that inspired the 1995 founding of Project Laundry List. “She said if we all hung out our clothes and did things like that, we could shut down the nuclear industry,” remembers Lee. “I was really moved by that.”
A semester learning environmental organizing skills in Missoula, Montana, helped Lee write a strategic plan for what would become Project Laundry List, which he continued to work on while studying at Vermont Law School. The basic premise that stands as its mission today was to “use words, images, and advocacy to educate people how simple lifestyle modifications, including air-drying one’s clothes, reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources.”
During the past decade, Lee has loaded Project Laundry List’s board with such advisers as Caldicott, artist Sabra Field ’57, and Middlebury scholar in residence Bill McKibben. Thanks to Lee, National Hanging Out Day (observed every April 19, a hair’s-breadth from Earth Day) spreads the message of “Stop the Plants, Hang Your Pants.”
Last September, after working on several energy commissions and political campaigns, Lee began working for Project Laundry List full-time. He’s the only paid employee; four other staff members (including photographer Annalisa Parent ’97) are volunteers. Except for the occasional consulting gig and speaking engagements within New England, Lee’s mostly manning his computer up to 12 hours a day, posting articles, promoting his work, processing small donations, and making connections among “laundry heroes.”
The ecological advantages of hanging out a load of laundry are obvious, he says. The Residential Energy Consumption Survey, conducted by the federal Energy Information Administration, has found that clothes dryers trail only refrigerators and lighting in their electricity consumption, accounting for six percent of the total electricity used by U.S. households. That’s 65.9 billion kilowatt hours, according to Lee; not included in that survey were gas dryers, which use up further resources.
Beyond the environmental benefits of hanging out laundry, says Lee, are personal reasons: nostalgia, exercise, and fresh air. “Plus it’s the best disinfectant, it’s free, and it’s the best way to bleach clothes,” he says. As Lee’s own apartment shows, even miserable days can be laundry days, thanks to indoor drying racks and clotheslines.
There are exceptions, concedes Lee, who says he’s been “attacked” by those who question the sanity of trying to air-dry clothes for a family of five. “A dryer is a good invention for some people, but a clothesline is a good option for others who could use a little bit more exercise and want to be in touch with the outdoors and slow down. This is not a mandate to dry; we’re talking about a right to dry.”
For many of the 60 million Americans who are part of the 300,000 homeowners’ associations across the country, the right to dry has been rewritten by community rules in place to ensure uniformity among condominium units and houses. On Project Laundry List’s Web site, you can read a slew of news articles about the latest plights of individuals like Oregon’s Susan Taylor, who faced legal action by her subdivision when she hung out her flannel sheets. Now she’s fighting to change the rules.
A call for “right to dry” legislation has been in place since before Project Laundry List, but Lee and his network have helped to push for laws that protect Taylor and fellow fresh-air fans. Because proposed bills get tangled up in centuries-old contract-sanctity arguments, says Lee, a load of laundry becomes a much more loaded topic than it looks.
“It becomes an ideological battle,” says Lee, adding that woven into the basket of air-drying laundry woes are issues of poverty and prudery. “The idea that, ‘I don’t want to see her bloomers,’ is really just an excuse,” he says. “There are obviously ways to hang your clothes that overcome that barrier.”
Soon, and thanks in part to Project Laundry List, Middlebury students may have fewer barriers to hanging their own clothes. After earning a $1,800 grant from the College’s Environmental Council, conducting a campuswide survey, and consulting with Lee, Isshaq Sadaqah ’11 is working to bring rentable drying racks into dorm rooms. “One day, they may be a basic component, just like a desk or bed,” says Sadaqah.
Campus sustainability coordinator Jack Byrne has helped to give Sadaqah’s ideas—bolstered by the Facebook group Laundry Revamp—the green light. “In the context of an institution that has made a commitment to become carbon neutral by 2016,” says Byrne, “a small contribution by everyone is significant.”
Can a humble clothespin really change the world? “It’s not enough,” admits Lee. “But it’s a fantastic metaphor —this is a gateway drug for getting people interested in small environmental changes, which lead to bigger things.”
Sarah Tuff ’95 is a writer in Burlington, Vermont, and a frequent contributor to Middlebury Magazine.