Clothes line

It is made of any type of rope, cord, wire, or twine that has been stretched between two points (e.g. two posts), outdoors or indoors, above ground level.

Longer washing lines often have props holding up the mid-section so the weight of the clothing does not pull the clothesline down to the ground.

In Scotland, many tenement buildings have a "drying green", which is a communal area predominantly used for clothes lines.

Controversy surrounding the use of clothes lines has prompted many governments to pass "right-to-dry" laws allowing their use.

[1] According to Ian Urbina, a reporter for The New York Times, "the majority of the 60 million people who now live in the [United States'] roughly 300,000 private communities" are forbidden from using outdoor clothes lines.

[8] As of August 2013[update], the states of Florida, Colorado,[9][10][11] Hawaii,[12] Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin had passed laws forbidding bans on clothes lines, while Utah allows local jurisdictions to forbid such bans.

[13] At least eight states restrict homeowners' associations from forbidding the installation of solar-energy systems, and lawyers have debated whether or not those laws might apply to clothes lines.

British filmmaker, Steven Lake, released a documentary in 2011 titled Drying for Freedom about the clothes-line controversy in the United States.