December 16, 2009

Is it Really so Bad to be Inconvenienced by Nature?

by: Taz Loomans

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We’ve had some rain in Phoenix in the past few days and one of the rainy days coincided with our laundry day.  As you know, we don’t own a dryer, nor did we provide one for our tenants at 3 Palms.  Instead, we’ve installed a retractable clothesline for us and our tenants which works just great 355 days out of the year.

But last Sunday it rained, and to be fair, a couple of the days before Sunday had been cloudy and cold so it was hard to get the clothes dry.  This inconvenience prompted our tenants to ask us what we did to dry our clothes on these kinds of days.  This question got us to thinking that maybe we should go ahead and install a dryer for them so they wouldn’t be inconvenienced.

But today, Wednesday, is a gorgerous December day in Phoenix.  The sun is shining and it’s a perfectly good day to dry our clothes on the clothes line.  And this got me to thinking, is it really that bad for us to skip doing laundry on the few days that are rainy and damp?  Is it really necessary for us to be able to do laundry 24-7, 360 days out of the year?  Or can we wait a day or two, because in Phoenix, that’s all you need to do for the sun to start shining again.

So after some contemplation, we won’t be buying a dryer to accomodate the five days out of the year when we can’t dry our clothes using the sun.  This isn’t because we want to save the money and the hassle, (although those are good fringe benefits of our decision).  The real reason is that it’s good for us to be in touch with nature enough so that we can appreciate it’s bounty but also respect it’s limitations.  Sure, it’s sometimes inconvenient when we defer to nature, like when we skip laundry on cold rainy days and buy produce that’s in season.  Who doesn’t crave strawberries in the winter?  But I’ll take a working and thriving eco-system any day over an added convenience.

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