I was kindly invited to spend a week in an Italian country home. The scene was a small town in Northern Italy. My guestroom window opened onto the family vegetable garden, and beyond I could see people bicycling down dirt roads past vineyards. But to get a complete picture of an Italian village or city, you can't forget the laundry.
It's hanging everywhere: on collapsible drying racks in the front yard, on balconies. In the city flapping sheets are protected from pigeon poop or mop water from upstairs by yellow and green plastic sheets (in Turin I learned the hard way how important these plastic sheets can be). The visitor's first impression chugging into the train station of a city of 2,000 or 2,000,000 are the apartment buildings that face the tracks, all fluttering with laundry.
The point here is that Italian homes never have dryers, and that they do an extraordinary amount of laundry per capita.
I had many long discussions in Italy trying to explain why on earth Americans buy dryers. I heard all the arguments against them: they take up space, they consume costly energy (and put an unnecessary strain on the environment), they shorten the life of expensive clothing and family linens. In fact, when I lived in Italy, I was more than happy to sun myself on the balcony and hang the laundry out to dry. It was a pleasant task, and not so much more work than monitoring the dryer. And, sure enough, clothes never shrank, and they lasted so much longer.
About a week after living in Brooklyn, I was back to the dryer. Why?
Hanging the clothes out to dry is a great idea if you've got a big back yard or if you live in a place where every apartment, no matter how small, comes equipped with a balcony. Here I have no balcony, and certainly no big back yard. So I set up my drying rack in the bedroom to dry my husband's thick, cotton socks. The next morning they were still dripping wet.
See, Italy has a very dry climate. Here I'm in an oceanic, at times swampy climate. Humidity is my biggest household problem. The thick terry cloth towel that dried in 2-3 hours in Italy takes 2-3 days to dry in Brooklyn, and the moisture it adds to the already damp bedroom causes mold. This environmentally-friendly laundry solution is possible in Italy, but impossible in humid climates.
Back to my sojourn with Italian friends. Our hostess was allergic to my cats, so they were camped out in the spacious guest bathroom/laundry room. Every time my hostess needed to go in to do laundry, I had to stick the kitties into their carriers for her.
The cats went into the carrier for laundry three to five times a day. No kidding. This is for a household of two adults (and two guests, who only used the washer twice that week). So, what's up with that? Unlike my American friends, the Italians I knew would often wear the same outfit several days in a row, only changing their underthings. Without a doubt Americans wash their clothes more frequently. So where does all this laundry come from?
It comes from the fact that Italians rarely use disposable paper products. The fabric of Italian lives is literally fabric. A cotton or linen tablecloth is on the table at every single meal. Napkins are always made of fabric, never paper. Handkerchiefs are used instead of Kleenex. Paper towels, or carta da cucina, are only used for drying delicate washed herbs or draining fat from cooked meat, so all household cleaning is done with rags. Almost every act of cooking and cleaning involves linens, and they must be kept clean.
While transitioning between two apartments, I went a few months doing all the laundry by hand. Knuckles red, arms aching, I would scrub tablecloths, bedsheets, blue jeans, and bath towels in the sink. Rinsing them was the worst part, and you really haven't lived until you've tried to squeeze a pair of blue jeans dry. Last month while watching the film 3-Iron, I noticed that the typical Korean homes depicted in the film didn't have laundry machines. The protagonist of the film made a point of doing the laundry for his "hosts," which was accomplished by scrubbing clothes with bar soap on a textured rubber mat in the shower. I wish I'd learned this technique before those months of dunking clothes in the sink.
On the happy day I got my first Italian washing machine, I was overjoyed. I put the first load in and turned on the machine. The cycle lasted an hour and a half (opposed to the typical 20 minute cycle of an American washer). Why? Because if you're going to scrub your toilet with a rag and then reuse it, you want that puppy clean. I quickly learned the Italian way of life was a lot kinder on the rain forest, and created less garbage for those landfills I talked about on Friday. But I questioned the environmental friendliness of using gallons of potable water and gallons of petroleum-based laundry detergents, bleach, powdered disinfectant, and fabric softener.
Fortunately, environmentally-friendly laundry products are on the market in the U.S. and in Europe (see Green Cleaning- Part 4).
As for water waste, European front-loading washers use a third to half the water of a typical American top-loading model. Front-loading machines consume 68% less energy than top-loaders, and get clothes dryer on the spin cycle, reducing dryer time. They use significantly less soap, and are able to wash clothes at high enough temperatures to disinfect, eliminating the need for environmentally toxic bleach. Their drum washing system has been proven to significantly increase the life of clothes (statistics mentioned above are from Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook).
Front-loading washers are available in the U.S.- but they have only a sliver of the market share. Why? Easy answer: front-loading washing machines cost more at the store. Top-loaders are comparatively cheap. Despite the fact that water, soap, and especially energy costs would save a family money in the long run, the fast, cheap solution is the one that sells. So, is everyone in Europe rich? Why are they dishing out money on expensive front-loaders? Another easy answer: they are the only type you can buy when you go to the store. Less environmentally friendly models simply aren't available to the consumer.
We've already seen legislation passed to curtail emissions by restricting the kinds of cars and trucks automobile manufacturers can sell in America. Why not do the same thing with a washer?
Nifty textured mat or no, it is hard to envision a future world where Americans do their laundry by hand. But generations of Europeans (and likely other cultures, as well) have been using environmentally-friendly laundry techniques, and the appliances and detergents they use are keeping up with the times. The U.S. definitely has something to learn about laundry from folks across the Atlantic.
We haven't washed our hands of laundry yet. In tomorrow's installment of green cleaning, we are going to discuss detergents and cleaners of all kinds, and how the cleaning agent you choose can make a significant difference not only for the environment, but for the health of your family, today.
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