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Line-drying advocates are armed for battle.

Phyllis Morris is the mayor of Aurora, Ont., and promoting clotheslines has become one of her pet causes. The trouble is that Morris lives in a subdivision where hanging out your washing is forbidden for aesthetic reasons by the developer.

But it's hard to imagine, what with rising energy costs and global warming and the growing eco-cleaning trend, that the sight of sheets and towels, trousers and T-shirts billowing in the breeze would offend anyone these days.

So last year, under Morris's leadership, Aurora town council voted to urge the provincial government to remove bans on backyard clotheslines, which exist, not just in Aurora, but throughout Ontario and across the country as well.

"We're not talking about something horrible here," Morris says. She points out that line-drying two loads of laundry a week can save the average household as much as 8 per cent of its hydro bill. "It's laundry. It's nice and clean."

And stylish -- regardless of whether expensive labels are flapping on the line. Forget splintery wooden clothespins: Designers are creating products that make outdoor drying easy and chic. Leading the way is Ikea, which has introduced bold red and black clothespins and a funky, red octopus drying hanger (complete with mindful eyes). Canadian Tire sells clothespins in an array of fresh, spring hues, along with a 50-foot retractable clothesline that is proving popular for small Toronto backyards.

Morris's fight can be seen as a continuation of the Right to Dry campaign launched in the United States in 1999 to press state legislatures into introducing laws limiting the ability of developers, landlords and cities to ban the use of clotheslines. (Pressure is mounting in states such as California, where nearly all of the 35,000 homeowners associations are subject to such restrictions; Florida and Utah have both recently passed Right to Dry legislation.) Alexander Lee of Concord, N.H., has been fighting for air-dried washing since 1995, when he was a student at Middlebury College in Vermont. He thinks laundry hanging on a line is beautiful -- so much so that his website (http://www.laundrylist.org) is dedicated to promoting the idea of washing blowing in the wind as something special, even artistic.

The website's stated mission is "to use words, images, and advocacy to educate people about how simple lifestyle modifications, including air-drying one's clothes, reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources."

To that end, laundrylist.org mounts exhibitions of art featuring clotheslines and holds poetry readings on laundry-related topics. "Almost every artist I know has painted or photographed washing hanging on a line," Lee says.

The site also reprints articles about the benefits of hanging out to dry (clothes last longer and smell better; it's exercise), recommends products (umbrella clotheslines, clothespins, phosphate-free detergents) and books (Betty's Book of Laundry Secrets, by Betty Faust; Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean, by Linda C. Cobb), and lists communities that ban clothesline drying.

"A lot of people see laundry on a line as a flag of poverty," Lee says. He has made it his aim to change that perception. "It's not just that it's organic, nostalgic and colourful. When I hang out the washing, it changes my relationship with the world."

Which is why Morris thinks she just might defy her development agreement and put up a clothesline in her tiny backyard.

"It doesn't offend me," she says, "and I think the developers are beginning to catch on."