What We Do
Project Laundry List got its start in 1995 and we have received a lot of kudos through the years from some pretty interesting people.
"Alexander Lee has used whimsy, humor, and alight touch to market a big idea that makes great sense. With very limited resources Alexander has skillfully built a national constituency behind an idea that is sensible, persuasive, evocative and accessible. Not many people that can make this claim for their work."
-Lew Feldstein, President New Hampshire Charitable Foundation
"You are the best!! Thank you so much for your website and listening to my clothesline story of woe. I had pretty much hit the wall before discovering you. Thank you for being there and connecting me with Anne-Marie Chaker from the Wall Street Journal. I now have hope. Thanks for "hanging in there" and doing what is right!"
-Susan Taylor, Bend, Oregon
"What a clever idea! We need to be thinking constantly of ways each of us in our own lives can consume less of the world's resources."
-Abbott Fenn, Vermont conservationist
Sen. Bernard Sanders"Project Laundry List is a wonderful idea for getting people interested and excited about taking personal responsibility for energy conservation. I applaud your efforts which are both innovative and important." (See full letter...)
-Hon. Bernie Sanders, United States Senator (VT)
"I have to admit that I have not hung out my laundry since moving from VT to NH and losing the lines in my back yard. Got lazy. But, since meeting you, we have put lines up in the back yard and are line drying again - decades later but as they say....better late than not at all. And, yes, it is good for the soul."
-Rep. Donna Schlachman, Exeter, NH
"Laundry offends the aesthetic sensibilities of some people. Where in Victorian times, clotheslines were ubiquitous, Mrs. Brown’s brassiere blowing in the breeze has apparently become scandalizing to some modern Americans. A strange brand of prudery has made it impossible for some people to conserve energy and money by using a clothesline."
-Helen Caldicott, M.D., Project Laundry List Advisory Board member
Founder of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
“As a way of prompting public discussion about energy use, [Project Laundry List] promises to be effective without being dogmatic.”
-John McCardell, President Emeritus, Middlebury College
“...[Project Laundry List] stirred up memories of my childhood because I did most of the laundry for my family when I was ten or twelve and we had only a ringer washing machine and an outdoor clothesline, so I hung our family’s clothes on the line in winter. It was cold and they were frozen, but they dried. When I read your article, I strung a series of lines in our basement and have not used the dryer since. I feel good to be making a small contribution toward using less electricity!”
-Carol Collins, Vermont craftswoman
Prof. John Elder“I applaud the imagination and energy behind Project Laundry List...Bringing this message home, and relating it to our personal housekeeping practices, both places it in a more understandable context and encourages us all to take responsibility for our daily chores.”
-John Elder, editor, writer, & professor
"Alexander Lee is my kind of environmental activist/evangelist. He is not trying to sell me a product that will reduce my carbon footprint two-tenths of one percent in the next ten years. He is not trying to make me ashamed of my standard of living, or getting in my face about how I have to lower it because “it’s not easy being green.” He’s telling me how to save money by being green. He’s telling me to wash my clothes in cold water and hang my laundry out to dry on a clothesline, like my grandmother did. At about $85 per year, the dryer is the most expensive household appliance after the refrigerator."
-Ken Braiterman, editor, writer, & professor
Noel Brown“Prohibiting or limiting the ability of people to sun-dry their clothes inadvertently encourages, even forces, people to the Laundromat—or to buy a dryer. In today’s world, we should be making every effort, calling on our ingenuity and creativity, to encourage people to conserve energy. We can afford to do no less.”
-Noel J. Brown, United Nations Environment Programme
Letter to VT State Rep. Tom Smith, April 1991
“I had forgotten how pleasing a simple chore like “hanging out” or, for that matter, hanging IN, in winter, can be. Saving energy and money is a side benefit.”
-Sabra Field, world-renowned Vermont artist
Comments from the Prescient
"The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
- President Theodore Roosevelt
“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately."
