Why? They don’t want to look at your underwear. That’s the long and short of it, although cited reasons include safety, property values, and public nuisance concerns. Of course there is a tangle of class and cultural prejudice at play as well.

So for the 60 million or so Americans whose lives are governed by homeowners associations (HOAs), clotheslines are likely to be truly unmentionable. The advocacy group Project Laundry List is building a list of known bans, and our friends at the Sightline Institute have started a similar and fast-filling Google map.

The good news is that several states have passed laws prohibiting such prohibitions, your Sunshine State among them. In fact, Florida is widely considered by the growing right-to-dry movement to be a role model for such legislation. (And if your neighborhood group is trying to institute a ban, you should flap your state law in its face.) In recent years, other states have followed suit in some fashion, including Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Utah, and Vermont; up north, Nova Scotia and Ontario have banned bans as well. Oregon, Virginia, and North Carolina have considered, but failed to pass, similar legislation (read this eye-opening account of how one debate devolved into snickers over knickers).

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While this might appear to be a minor issue, the clothesline brouhaha ties into a broader battle over clean energy, since HOAs often prohibit the installation of solar panels too. (So unsightly, don’t you know.) The state laws I mention above are intended to promote all forms of solar power, including the low-tech type represented by clotheslines. The New York Times has dubbed HOAs the “enemy of solar,” and there have been stabs at federal legislation that would forbid prohibitions on solar installations — including this year — but so far, no dice.

So what can you do about your duds if your HOA hasn’t seen the light? One approach is to broach alternative solutions. Some associations are open to retractable clotheslines. And some people have built a three-sided latticework pergola sort of structure and put the clotheslines inside … the structure is attractive (and can be used as a trellis for cucumbers or tomatoes or flowers). Problem solved!!!!!” Points for creativity, and for enthusiastic use of punctuation.

If your HOA won’t budge, don’t give up: Clothes dryers burn a full 6 percent of our home energy and are the second-hoggiest appliances after our refrigerators. So string a clothesline in your basement or garage or bedroom, or see my previous advice on various types of drying racks. Drape your clothes on hooks and chairs and bookshelves.

Even if you are a guy staying alone and unfortunately doing your laundry by yourself, it isn’t exactly comfortable to slip into moist jeans with the mercury already dropping. To dry clothes that are partially or totally damp, you can try some of these alternatives at home.

How To Dry Clothes During Winter?

• First of all, try to hang your clothes on a clothes line after you take it out of the clothes dryer of your washing machine. If you pile clothes one on top of the other then none will dry because they will absorb the moisture from each other.
• It is always better to give it a try outdoors before turning to indoor alternatives for drying. If not sunlight then at least fresh air helps take away the damp moldy smell from garments. However if it is cloudy outside you better make arrangements indoors.
• Even if you are drying clothes indoors it is important to hang then in a line. In fact it becomes all the more important because your clothes need more space to dry indoors. Tie up cords to form a make shift clothes line and leave the fan on.
• Not all clothes can be put into the clothes dryer of the washing machine. Some delicate clothing like silk or chiffon need more soft handling. So if you need quick drying for such clothes then the best way is to squeeze them as dry as you can. The lesser water they retain, the faster they will dry.
• If you need a method of drying clothes that is quicker then you need to take help from machines. Not to worry, these are very very common house hold machines that will come to your aid.
• The hair dryer that dries your dainty locks can be used to dry small items of clothing like socks, undergarments and handkerchiefs. Air conditioners do not dry anything other than your skin; it will make the clothes damper but you can experiment with a room heater.
• If you are in a hurry and your jeans is only partially dry then you can try an instant solution that always works. Iron it with a warm clothes iron. Ideally you are not supposed to iron jeans because it spoils the elasticity so don’t over do it.

Use these home improvement tips to dry clothes at home during winters faster and better than before.

The Laundry Pod
The Laundry Pod touts itself as a more convenient and environmentally-friendly way to do laundry. The device itself is pretty simple. Fill the Pod with a small load of laundry and let it soak for several minutes. Then, feed the Pod’s hose into a nearby sink, spin the handle on top to wring your clothes of excess water, and finish drying on a clothes line.

While a nice alternative to the laundromat, the Laundry Pod’s $100 price tag is pretty steep, considering this is basically just an oversized salad spinner. But if you’d like something basic to do the occasional load of lightly soiled clothes, the Laundry Pod is a good investment.

The Laundry Alternative
The Laundry Alternative has a tag-teaming duo that can wash and wring your clothes dry. The Wonder Wash ($43) is a hand-cranked washing machine that works much like the Laundry Pod. And the company’s Spin Dryer ($145), is an electric alternative to the manual spin cycle found on the Laundry Pod.

While more convenient than a fully manual option, it’s unfortunate that the company doesn’t combine the two into a single tabletop unit. Transferring a load from the Wonder Washer to the Spin Dryer and then on to a clothes line seems like a lot of work to wash two or three pairs of jeans.

Panda Washer
The Panda Washer ($100) is another popular mini-laundry solution. While it doesn’t offer a spin cycle, the Panda Washer does the work of swirling the water to give your clothes a deeper clean. Paired with The Laundry Alternative’s Spin Dryer, this is your most hands-off way to do a load.

Haier Dryer
A counter top washer is great, but it’s of little use if you don’t have the space for a clothes line. Haier makes a dryer ($246) that is less than 3 cubic feet, small enough to fit in even the most cramped studio apartments. Not only does the Haier solve your space problems, but it also works with a regular 120-volt plug, so you avoid the cost of hiring an electrician to install the 240-volt hookup required by most larger dryers.

In the rest of the world, however, washing lines still liven up the streetscape. Author and publisher Marieke Cambeen collected photos of the phenomenon and gathered them in her book, Clotheslines, the binding factor.

She began collecting photos after seeing a weblog showing pictures of washing lines. They show that drying one’s laundry is universal, but that every culture has its own way of doing it.

What struck her was that there are countries where clotheslines are not in public view. In some American states they are banned, or people are mainly using electric dryers. That’s a pity, according to Marieke Cambeen: “Dryers use a lot of energy. Using lines is more sustainable, and a line full of flapping clothes never fails to cheer me up.”

In order to get the book onto the market Marieke Cambeen founded her own publishing house, appropriately named Tendedero: washing line in Spanish.

These hang-ups about hanging out laundry are so widespread that a “Right to Dry” movement has arisen to defend the ancient, common-sense use of a clothesline. Restrictions on this efficient solar-energy device prevent millions of households from drying clothes outdoors, according to Project Laundry List, which keeps track of these strange rules (and provides a lot of useful tips for cutting energy and water use in the laundry process.)

Only a few states have passed laws that override such restrictions, Florida’s being the toughest. Colorado does have a law that overrides the ban on outdoor drying, but it’s rather weak, as it only applies to retractable clotheslines. Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Utah, Vermont, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia also have laws that override outdoor drying bans to varying degrees. For example, some allow clotheslines but forbid you to drape clothes on a balcony. California has no protection of your Right to Dry.

The big quibble with clotheslines is that they supposedly cause a drop in property values, though it’d seem that the criminals and plutocrats in banks and on Wall Street have had a considerably greater effect on the real estate crash than T-shirts and panties flapping in the breeze. This property-value argument itself is based on the notion that clotheslines and clothes flapping on them are aesthetically offensive, which seems a rather strange position in view of the fact that Americans spend billions visiting aesthetically appealing cities all over the world that tolerate clotheslines. So we’re dealing here with one of the many silly taboos that beset our culture.

Clothes-drying requires the equivalent of around 60 million kilowatts of power per year, roughly the equivalent of the electrical energy consumed by 5 million typical U.S. households — which are, of course, consuming far more than they really need to in the first place.

Apparently only Big Organic is allowed to sell delicious foods where the chain of custody is well known by the creator and the consumer.

But if you aren’t educated by advertising and can’t afford Whole Paycheck Foods, homemade stuff may be ideal. California foodies do not want to hide in the shadows any more. “Handcrafted” “artisanal” and “homegrown” should not just be claims that corporations are allowed to make any more, they say.

They want cottage food laws, which 30 states not as oppressive as California have, that would allow sales of home-made goods half of those were passed since the Great Recession began in 2007. Will it happen? Unlikely, progressives are the enemies of freedom so regulations, permits and inspections take place over poorer people who can’t afford an onerous $800 fee just to open a banking account being able to be self-sufficient in a state blighted by an anti-business mentality being able to make a living in a small business.

Why? They don’t want to look at your underwear. That’s the long and short of it, although cited reasons include safety, property values, and public nuisance concerns. Of course there is a tangle of class and cultural prejudice at play as well.

So for the 60 million or so Americans whose lives are governed by homeowners associations (HOAs), clotheslines are likely to be truly unmentionable. The advocacy group Project Laundry List is building a list of known bans, and our friends at the Sightline Institute have started a similar and fast-filling Google map .

The good news is that several states have passed laws prohibiting such prohibitions. In fact, Florida is widely considered by the growing right-to-dry movement to be a role model for such legislation. (And if your neighborhood group is trying to institute a ban, you should flap your state law in its face.)

In recent years, other states have followed suit in some fashion, including Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Utah, and Vermont; up north, Nova Scotia and Ontario have banned bans as well. Oregon, Virginia, and North Carolina have considered, but failed to pass, similar legislation.

While this might appear to be a minor issue, the clothesline brouhaha ties into a broader battle over clean energy, since HOAs often prohibit the installation of solar panels too. The state laws I mention above are intended to promote all forms of solar power, including the low-tech type represented by clotheslines. The New York Times has dubbed HOAs the “enemy of solar,” and there have been stabs at federal legislation that would forbid prohibitions on solar installations — including this year — but so far, no dice.

So what can you do about your duds if your HOA hasn’t seen the light? One approach is to broach alternative solutions. Some associations are open to retractable clotheslines. In my area, until clothes dryers became ubiquitous, many people built a three-sided latticework pergola sort of structure and put the clotheslines inside … the structure is attractive (and can be used as a trellis for cucumbers or tomatoes or flowers).

If your HOA won’t budge, don’t give up: Clothes dryers burn a full 6 percent of our home energy and are the second-hoggiest appliances after our refrigerators. So string a clothesline in your basement or garage or bedroom, or see my previous advice on various types of drying racks. Drape your clothes on hooks and chairs and bookshelves. When you do laundry, heed these energy-saving tips. And prance around in your skivvies!

Another thing I like about doing laundry is hanging clothes out to dry on my solar clothes dryer. Here is a picture of it.

My mother used to call this a “clothesline” and I suspect that is what most people still call it. I used to have one when we lived in town that looked like a big umbrella attached to a pole that was sunk into the ground. It was amazing how many clothes I could dry on that at one time.

We didn’t bring that clothesline with us when we moved to the farm. I figured that I’d just go to Walmart or somewhere and buy another one to put up here. However, in the mean time, Tom rigged up the one above for me between the poles of the carport. That has been over 2 years ago and I’m still using it. It will only hold one load of clothes. But, in the summer time, most clothes will dry before the next load of clothes is ready to hang out.

I’ve never done any research to determine just how much energy (and, therefore, money) it saves to dry clothes outside. But, it has got to be quite a bit, because a load of jeans will dry much faster outside on a hot summer day than they will inside.

Unfortunately, the heating element on my solar clothes dryer is going to go out this week. We’ve already had several days this fall when it was too cold to hang clothes outside and this week we have a cold front coming that is suppose to drop the high daytime temperatures into the 40s. I imagine it will be next spring before I’ll be using my solar clothes dryer again.

Dryers are hard on clothing, and can cause the colors to fade more quickly, and can even tear clothing. I’ve been known to lose a good shirt or two to a drying snafu. I currently use a drying rack for most of my clothes drying, because it keep my clothes looking brighter, longer. The nice thing about a drying rack in the winter, is that it puts moisture back into dry air, and you can easily dry clothes anywhere in the house.

And for good measure, residents cannot drape clothing or other laundered items on porch railings to dry.

“We had complaints about people drying clothes on railings in the front of their homes,” said township Manager Margaret Keegan.

The commissioners also approved an ordinance that will allow the township to go after property owners who are delinquent in sewer and rubbish fees. Under the ordinance, dubbed Neighborhood Blight Reclamation and Revitalization, the township can deny the issuance of permits and/or certificates of occupancy to delinquent property owners. The new statute also allows the township to place liens on the properties.