The Feng Shui of Clotheslines

Feng Shui (meaning “wind” and “water”) is the ancient Chinese art of placement. It is based on the principle of “chi”, a life-force energy that flows through your house and surrounding landscape. The idea is to balance the soft, slow, receptive, feminine Yin energy with the hard, fast, active, masculine Yang energy.

I’ve been dabbling in Feng Shui since the ’90s, when it became de rigueur in America. I have various wind chimes, lucky symbols, and pictures placed around my house. I can’t really say if they work, but I have a pretty harmonious life so it certainly doesn’t hurt!

I recently bought a Feng Shui kit at a thrift store, that had two books and several decorative symbols. I placed the new symbols around my house and read the book of hints. The hint that struck me, being a clothesline user, was to: NEVER HANG YOUR WASHING OUT OVERNIGHT. Night energy is excessively Yin, so you should never hang your laundry out after dark. Your washing will absorb the Yin energies of the night and upset your feng shui.

Who hangs their laundry out overnight, you might say? Well, ME, when I was a complete newbie to the air-drying scene. My dryer had bit the dust and I was faced with drying a load of laundry. Luckily it was summertime, so I strung some sort of rope in my backyard for a makeshift clothesline. I hung out all the wet towels and sheets and hoped for the best. The sun went down, and I just left them out there thinking that it would give them more drying time overnight. Bad idea. A summer rainstorm hit in the middle of the night and completely soaked everything. I guess you could say that I learned my lesson the very first time I hung laundry. Since then, I’ve instinctively gathered in the laundry before sundown. The night air is colder and moister, and doesn’t help in any drying anyway.  🙂

~Marilyn