Washing woes - it’s a neighbour one…

[Flatwhitewhiner]

I live in a ground floor apartment in a block that’s popular with holiday makers and second home-owners. It’s my first property (exchanged only a year ago) and it has a little garden and patio area - both of which are part of my boundary lines according to my lease. This is important!

Recently I had a run-in with my neighbour who is directly upstairs from my flat. She uses her properly maybe for half of the week, if that, incase this is useful info. It’s not the first time she has leaned over her balcony to impart wisdom to me but her complaints are as follows:

1. She doesn’t like the fact that I hang my laundry outside on my patio area to dry because it spoils her view from her balcony (and others). She believed that I was breaking the terms of the lease and threatened to tell the management company. I have received a series of round robin emails from said company that inform people not to use their balconies for hanging washing etc. Now I believe I know the source! My flat is directly below hers so I don’t quite understand what view it is that I’m blocking, only that she doesn’t like looking at wet clothes…

2. She commented that I would need to be careful if I wanted to do anything in my garden because ‘some of the residents like to look out over grass’. Last time I checked, though, it’s definitely my bloody garden. In the same conversation she informed me that I ‘wasn’t a natural gardener’.

Needless to say I put her in her box about the terms of my lease and did tell her that I was wise to her mean comments and emails. I told her that I wasn’t prepared to be bullied. Since then no emails but I have been on holiday!

Anyway, it’s a warm day and I’d like to hang out all my holiday attire in the fresh air but I feel totally sheepish doing so. I’m also angry that I’ve been picked up in for something so petty as it would never occur to me to be remotely bothered by someone else’s bedsheets hanging in the breeze! I’m also annoyed that she’s literally and figuratively looking down at my space that I’ve paid for.

What should I do, ignore her? Continue my washing war? Get the landscape gardener in? Or kill her with kindness?

Wisdom welcome!

Yay, I'm so glad you are not being bullied into submission OP. Outside dried clothes are the BEST!

Mumsnet can be a total eye opener. I can almost understand why people wouldn’t like it if there were towels and bedsheets hanging off the rails of the balcony but is it really against a lease to even put out a clothes airer with wet washing on it on a balcony? Surely since OP’s area is a patio, she’s exempt from such barmy rules? My dining room window looks onto the area where our neighbour has her washing, and the most I’ve ever noticed about it is if there’s a good breeze for drying- I certainly couldn’t tell you (nor would I care!) what types of garments she’s drying. As PP have said, surely the environmental benefit outweighs the trauma of “having to look at other people’s washing”.

@SaintDrogo

Mumsnet can be a total eye opener. I can almost understand why people wouldn’t like it if there were towels and bedsheets hanging off the rails of the balcony but is it really against a lease to even put out a clothes airer with wet washing on it on a balcony? Surely since OP’s area is a patio, she’s exempt from such barmy rules? My dining room window looks onto the area where our neighbour has her washing, and the most I’ve ever noticed about it is if there’s a good breeze for drying- I certainly couldn’t tell you (nor would I care!) what types of garments she’s drying. As PP have said, surely the environmental benefit outweighs the trauma of “having to look at other people’s washing”.

See my lease pics up thread. I have my own garden! No washing on view and that includes say hanging a shirt up in the window to air or something

It's ok if you have decent neighbours but mine has the management company on speed dial
Next door are infuriating him as because theirs is a house, they can have an airer outside so mine goes there, or on their driveway with their washing

I get why they say it for huge blocks of flats but mine is the only garden, and is next to houses. So 6 gardens in a row can have washing out, but I can't

I really don't understand a prohibition of washing on or about your own property regardless of the location. I hope the people who have made these rules, or believe they matter and enforced them, are happy with their little contribution if the Gulf Stream stops as is looking increasingly likely. Scary that people genuinely still believe what their flats look like is more important than having a planet we can live safely on.

[quote Flatwhitewhiner]@SylvanasWindrunner thanks for making me laugh out loud. I was so tempted to find some lewd outfits but alas, I’m too boring…[/quote]
See what you can find in charity shops!