Chico, Sustainable

Wet laundry, hot weather, a phone with a headset, and friends and family to call are a winning combination. Let me explain.

Time, sadly, is a nonrenewable resource. So, if you have the capability to do two things at once, then you are being sustainable. Ergo, if you can find something mindless and productive to do while you are talking on the phone, you are doing pretty good.

My wife’s mindless chore of choice is hanging laundry (my job is doing the dishes). Not that we don’t have a dryer, its just that on a 95 degree day it seems that our back patio heats up to more like 105. Most hung clothes are dry in less than 20 minutes, much faster than using the dryer, not to mention that the capacity of our clothesline is more than that of the dryer. This method uses less energy too. And of course, my wife gets to use the opportunity to catch up with friends and relatives on the other side of the country.

And just to provide full disclosure, once the clothes are dry, we do toss them into the dryer for 6 minutes (no heat) to fluff things up a bit.