The local Kroger in Broad Ripple is the tiniest Kroger in the world; kind of a 1/3rd-scale version of a modern supermarket. Obviously, this makes its selection of stuff a bit narrower, but it still has most of what you'd expect to find at a grocery store.
It has a full planogram section on one gondola, or whatever it's called in modern retailing terminology, devoted to "green" household stuff; five or six shelves high by three feet wide crammed with Gaia-friendly products from companies like Seventh Generation and Method. They have organic biodegradable non-toxic fabric softener, fer Vishnu's sake...
...but they don't devote two pegs in housewares to clothesline and clothespins.
I don't get it.
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How many people nowadays have even SEEN a clothespin?
Most people live in big cities in apartments without access to areas to hang clothes out to dry.
Personally, I miss that ability. When we have our own house, the clothesline better already be there or it's going in FIRST!
BTW, hiyas, yes I'm still reading!
Gaiaism is a feel good religion.
Greenies just want to feel smug, self righteous, and superior about themselves; they don't want to actually be inconvenienced.
It's at the hardware store.
Ace is the Place.
High profit margin "green" gets shelf space, low profit margin doesn't? Harumph, harumph! Some greedy capitalist probably just bought a Lexus with some gentle environmentalist's cash.
*sniff* Now that's what I call green!
Really Tam. How insesitive of you. I mean, really, people who use such an old fashioned method of drying their clothes are foisting upon all the humanity around them the aroma of drying clean cloth as the wind wafts through the back yard.
And, and, while the clothes are on the line, they're blocking the sunlight from reaching the grass beneath (which gets walked on and crushed by the feet of the launderer - twice per load) so the grass isn't able to produce as much life-giving oxygen (especially after it's been crushed and broken).
A clothesline is a type of rope. Ropes kill. Ban ropes!
Actually, I never heard if any passed but a few cities were considering banning the hanging clothes outdoors last year. Not to mention Homeowner`s Associations.
In Georgia clothesline doesn't seem to be much of an option right now, if your wardrobe isn't yellow when you put it out, it will be when you take it in.
Tim D
They are just saving us from glowbull warmnin, don'tcha know that watervapor is so much more a "greenhouse" gas than CO2. Wouldn't want that getting into the air.
Pretty simple, really. They must sell enough of the fake-green stuff to your local Broad Hippy neighbors to make it worth stocking, and not enough clotheslines or clothes pins.
Same reason the gun gear catalogs are full of gimmicky "hardware solutions to software problems."
Stuff is cheap.
Time is expensive.
No profit in it.
The markup on "green" products is huge.
Clothespins aren't green. They are simply old-fashioned.
The small size adds to it. There's more of a pressure to put things on the shelves that "Move".
And as said before, clothelines don't.
The green movement is about finding simple low-impact, low energy solutions the same way the hipster movement is about living on a frugal, low-income scale budget.
What is a clothesline?
I've heard tell of in the ancient times they strung lines across buildings or poles and hung wet clothes on them to dry in the sun. It always struck me as inanely archaic.
Clothespins are for hanging this laundry? This whole time I thought they were for holding the potato chip bag closed. Ya know the potato chips you eat while your clothes are drying in the drier and you're watching a re-run of Oprah.
-Rob
It's simple. The same people pushing "green this" and "green that" are the same ones pushing their HOA's, towns, and cities to ban clotheslines because they're "unattractive" and "reduce property values".
They want "green," they just don't want to have to see green.
...Oy. I may be the only VFTP reader who has strung up lines inside the house in Winter, though not for years (other than the few Do Not Tumble Dry items in my work wardrobe that end up draped across the washing machine or on plastic hangers). When you consider how dry Roseholme gets in the cold months, the more I think og it, the better sense it makes.
--And if anyone was wondering, the clothesline and pins were for me, though I know I packed up some of each hen I moved. Two years ago.
You get it perfectly well, Tam, you just aren't acknowledging it.
In my home there is an electric wash machine and dryer. I'm quite pleased with them and one is running as I type. In the bathroom, however, is something from my apartment days. A collapsed wooden drying rack.
Back when the apartment was heated by steam I'd put the drying rack in the dining room and dangle a load of wet laundry from it. The clothes would dry and the house wouldn't be as staticky.
But back to this house. I still use the drying rack from time to time.
When I was in Iraq, a good friend house sat for me. She is a good friend and as open-minded as a person who drove a Prius can be - she gave it up and now drives a Jeep, bless her heart. But she is an earth-conscious something-or-other. Her food is almost all organic as are most of the cleaning supplies in her house - she buys "biodegradable" soap that costs five times as much as the Ivory soap in my bathroom, never realizing that the two ingredients in Ivory soap are wood ash and animal fat - both biodegradable.
She subscribes to the Sierra Club's magazine as well as to "Indiana Conservancy." Her Gaia-cred is well established.
I'm now getting water and gas & electric bills that show my consumption on a graph with that of the preceding 12 months.
Almost without exception my utility consumption is at least half of hers, as is my water consumption. I don't gloat though, and she doesn't know about this comparison. Nothing good would come of it. Feeling like I'm wasting as little as I know how to do trumps smug self-righteousness. I also save money which lets me buy more bullets. I get my smug satisfaction from knowing I get to engage in a hobby that makes liberals fill their Pull-Ups.
Buying this-or-that makes her feel good and as though she's doing something worthwhile which in her world is good enough. I've got better things to do than unnecessarily disabuse someone of innocent illusions that give them joy.
gvi
WV: surouse v. To wake someone unnecessarily for the evil pleasure it gives.
There's a big difference between selling green dish and laundry soap and selling clothes pins and clothes lines. The former can be sold over and over. With the latter, they buy it once, so there's no real profit margin for the store, nor is it beneficial to waste shelf space on something that won't move quickly, if at all.
Because of the one thing that Broad Ripple has more than hair salons, yoga studios, Obama yard signs, hip restaurants and microbreweries . . . White Guilt.
Shootin' Buddy
Look for the clothesline where you see the laundry baskets and folding drying racks (the one you stack in the bathtub). Or just head to the hardware store, where they have usually been.
The clothesline my mother used - was number nine wire. Grocery stores don't usually carry construction grade galvanized wire.
And, yes, the Warmers did start agitating to retire clothes dryers last winter. The most ardent prefer setting the drying rack next to the wood-fired cook stove. Yes, some are going to the wood cookstove, which only seem to be made in Europe now. Which means intercontinental and continental transport to get the very pricey thing home. I guess this is one exception they accept from "buy local". I wonder if the warmers, with their "composting" (septic tank free) toilets, realize how much natural gas and electricity - not to mention water - they could save, just by turning off the hot water heater. Let the tank gravitate to "room temperature" or a bit below. You know, "natural" like.
Clotheslines? Tacky things that country bumpkins use. How gauche.
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