I decide to rig a clothesline as an experiment. My mother died many years ago and the idea of hanging laundry with my own daughter, Isabel, who is 13 and always busy at the computer, is oddly appealing. I’m also hoping to use less energy and to reduce our monthly electric bills which hit the absurdly high level of $1,120 last summer.

That simple decision to hang a clothesline, however, catapults me into the laundry underground. Clotheslines are banned or restricted by many of the roughly 300,000 homeowners’ associations that set rules for some 60 million people. When I called to ask, our Rolling Hills Community Association told me that my laundry had to be completely hidden in an enclosure approved by its board of directors.

I briefly considered hanging our laundry in the front yard, just to see what would happen, but my family vetoed this idea. Instead, I settled on stringing two lines in a corner of the backyard, a spot not visible to neighbors or officials. I’m supposed to submit a site plan of our property and a photograph of my laundry enclosure. But I don’t have an enclosure, unless the hedge qualifies.

Looking for fellow clothesline fans, I came across the Web site of Alexander Lee, a lawyer and 32-year-old clothesline activist in Concord, N.H. In 1995 Mr. Lee founded Project Laundry List, a nonprofit organization, as a way to champion “the right to dry.” His Web site, laundrylist.org, is an encyclopedia on the energy advantages of hanging laundry.

Image ON THE LINE To reduce energy bills and carbon emissions, the author secretly hung a clothesline in her backyard. Like many homeowners associations, hers restricts their use. Credit... Sara Remington for The New York Times

Mr. Lee sponsors an annual National Hanging Out Day on April 19. He plans to string a clothesline at the State House in Concord, N.H., this Saturday as part of a Step It Up 2007 rally on climate change, where he will hang T-shirts and sheets with the slogan “Hang Your Pants. Stop the Plants.”