Eating Crow

I don't have a clothes dryer. I consider them a luxury and I have always taken a firm position on getting one for my family: No way, Jose!

Apart from the fact that they eat up electricity the same way a Hummer guzzles gas, (that is, uselessly!), I am Hungarian and in Hungary we never had dryers before. We would always hang our clothes to dry, usually on a really nifty hanger that pulleyed down from the ceiling in the bathroom. I don't know what these things are called but they are awesome.

Other people would hang them on plain foldable clothes drying racks and the luckiest people would hang them out on their balconies or back yards. No dryers in Hungary. Of course, this is my 7-year-old impression of Hungary because that is how old I was when I left. Nowadays driers are slowly making their way into the homes of people who can afford them. But I digress...

There is not really any room in my present apartment for a dryer, as even the washing machine is in the living room. This is a house that was converted into three apartments, so there isn't the usual laundry cabinet to hide the washer in. It's right there, in plain sight, in my living room. Hideous, to tell you the truth. In Hungary, the washing machines are also smaller than our behemoth North American models, and there is always room for them in the bathroom. But, again, I digress...

A few years ago, a friend of mine's washer broke and to replace it she bought a washer-dryer set. She wanted me to buy her old dryer so she could have the space for the new one. I refused, saying how I didn't need a dryer and didn't want the added electricity consumption, besides which I dried my clothes quite nicely on my drying racks and didn't feel the need to buy a machine. I probably mentioned that dryers are not good for the environment because of the energy they consume and because of the amount of metal, etc. that goes into them and eventually into our landfills. Long story short, I didn't want to buy her drier, but there was also the fact that I sometimes got the feeling she was trying to make money off me. I had bought a few things from her before, like lots of children's clothes. (To be fair, though, she also did give me a lot of hand-me-downs for free.) So I did not want her dryer.

She tried to convince me that a family with three children needed a dryer, and she gave me examples, like if a child is sick and vomiting a lot and you have to wash the sheets and need to dry them quickly before he vomits again and you need fresh sheets for the bed again. In my case, I had of course been in such situations, but had always managed without having to resort to running out and buying clean sheets. Or a dryer. This was pretty stressful to me because I didn't want to refute her arguments by making her feel incompetent. Perhaps she deemed a dryer a necessity, but I could manage very well without one. The situation got to be so bad, that in the end I ended the friendship. Not JUST over the dryer, over other things also, but the dryer was a thorn on my side among others.

Lately, though, I have come to be a little impatient about drying clothes on racks in the living room. I always feel better when the laundry is folded and put away in its place. The living room just seems more livable like that. Also, since I found out that Second Son is allergic to dust and dust mites (among numerous other things!) I have to wash his sheets once a week, and the allergist recommends washing them in hot water and then drying them in a machine. The heat kills the dust mites.

So lately I have been thinking about swallowing my pride and actually starting to look for a dryer. I'm not 100% committed, since I really can't afford to buy one, and I am afraid of my electricity bill skyrocketing, not to mention that I couldn't fit one into my car and I don't want to pay for shipping, but I am thinking about it more and more. The last little nudge in this direction came from Daughter, who was upset that I had washed her beach towel - the new one she had gotten from her grandparents! - because now it was rough from air-drying and she had liked it soft.

So I am starting to cave to the pressure. You might in the not-too-distant future see a rare sight: the high and mighty Airdry Snob eating crow.