Our clothes dryer died in grand style last week. Normally it makes sort of a mechanical whirring sound, similar to all other electrical dryers ever. But this time I pushed the start button and it went: BANG! POP! [Insert burning smell here.] Luckily, there was no accompanying electrical fire, but still. Noisy, startling, and resulting in wet laundry.

The dryer is fairly new and still under warranty, which would have been great if we could find the warranty information. (We found it. Eventually. They’ll be here to deal with the dryer on Tuesday, I think.)

Normal people in normal houses might, when faced with dryer-less-ness, put up a clothesline. We, of course, are not especially normal, nor do we have a normal HOA. Actually, I suspect we DO have a normal HOA. We have the kind of HOA that says things like “no clotheslines visible over your five-foot-tall backyard fence” and “no permanent clotheslines.” So we’ve been improvising. (Read: drying towels at my mother’s house.)

We have learned that we can dry one load of clothes per day in the house. We can wash more than that, we can hang up more than that, but if we do, nothing will dry. The air in the house will, however, achieve a sort of perpetual dampness which cannot possibly be good for the furniture or the walls or anything else that might have the ability to grow mildew. Ick. So: one load of clothes it is. One load of clothes. Hanging on the curtain rod in my living room. Where they are not permanent or visible over the backyard fence. Sigh.