A backyard view of your neighbour’s drying underwear is not why people move to the suburbs. But after five years and a public airing of one neighbourhood’s dirty laundry, Mississauga has passed a bylaw restricting the use of clotheslines.

“I think it’s a shame we had to pass a bylaw. In my entire career I’ve had one complaint about a clothesline,” said Councillor Pat Saito. “But this was so bad.”

Responding to a complaint from residents, council unanimously passed a bylaw Wednesday restricting clotheslines to less than three metres high, at least 1.5 metres from the fence line, never in the front yard and in one straight line only.

The move was in response to a complaint from residents of Indian Grove Dr.

Steve DeVoe and his wife, Joanne, share a property line and a direct view into a neighbour’s yard where, they claim, ever more elaborate clotheslines have been cropping up like weeds, come rain, come sleet and even snow.

“Not only to keep it up this long, but to have it escalate every year,” Joanne said. “It went from four lines to suddenly there were 12 lines.”

At last count, according to their complaint, there were more than 15 clotheslines “at heights exceeding 20 ft.”

When the Star surveyed the property Thursday, the lines were down. The pole — a roughly 10-metre piece of narrow driftwood — was bare but remained. A man who answered the door at the property declined to comment. The resident also declined to comment when reached by phone.

“They just took it all down this afternoon,” Steve said, clutching what he claimed were just some of the “hundreds” of photos he took of laundry hanging just beyond his fence line, that he said would often stay up for as long as a week at a time.

“Here’s an underwear day,” he said, brandishing one of the dozens of photos he submitted to council, showing multiple pairs of men’s and women’s stockings and briefs, all apparently hung with care in the drifting snow.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with drying clothes,” he said.

Steve said it all started five years ago. The DeVoes knocked down their existing home and built a bigger one in its place to accommodate a growing family of five. While the new home is substantially larger than the old, it is well back from the property lines.

The DeVoes said they tried talking with their neighbours at the time — and many times since — but went to council as a last resort when all their overtures were rebuffed.

Because council had no other bylaws that could be used to deal with this sort of problem, Saito said, the new clothesline rules were a last resort.

“Residents can still put up their clothesline. I would love it if everybody had a clothesline,” she said.

“If everyone used common sense and respect for their neighbours we wouldn’t need bylaws like this. Nobody wants to stare at other people’s clothes hanging on a line,” she added.

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DeVoe, meanwhile, is delighted he won’t have to look at his neighbour’s laundry anymore.

“This feels good. The clothes came down today for the first time in four years. They were up 365 days a year, in the summer, the winter, thunderstorms. Now I can go out to my backyard or my friends if I'm entertaining and we don't have to look at a 20-foot wall of underwear."

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