Drying clothes verses watering plants - a domestic battle in downtown Milan

Washing hanging in laudry friendly city Rome. Photo by Antonia Scott.

So here's the thing. In Italy the majority of people live in apartments - one on top of the other.

Growing up in Australia I'm used to living in houses with backyards and washing lines so my apartment requirements in Italy have always included a balcony for a slice of open air and most importantly, somewhere to sundry my washing.

There are picturesque zones in Italy where washing hangs freely from long lines that extend from one end of your apartment to the other. Often accessed via a window with fresh green shutters and a pulley system that circulates the line around allowing for all your colourful garments to blow in the breeze drying under the sun's care.

However, in cities like Milan this rainbow of laundry neck lacing your building is less frequent. In fact, I am the only apartment on my side of the block where you can find a load of washing drying from  a mobile line attached to the outside of my balcony. My neighbours have similar structures but tend to use them about once a week for their bigger items like sheets and tablecloths. Instead of laundry their balconies are full of cascading vines and beautiful bright flowers.

While perplexed over where everyone else is drying their washing, surely not inside or worst still in a dryer in such wonderful weather, I carried on drying freely outdoors, my only fears: random bird droppings and the shaking of floor rugs from the apartment above (both of which have only occurred a few times in the last six months - thankfully).

That was until this morning. After carefully putting out a load of fresh bright whites I was horrified to see water cascading down from the balcony above soiling my laundry.

I ran out calling to the neighbour above "Excuse me! Excuse me!" I called up while grappling with the heavy line of laundry trying to lift it and pull it away from the dirty sludge falling from the pot plants above.

An older woman's face popped up over the balcony above, annoyed at me!

"It's just water!" she called out as the water from her pot plants that hang over the balcony spilled over dribbling soil down as it went.

"It's not just water!" I called up, at that moment more in shock that she wasn't apologising than at her ridiculous self serving rational.

"You need to look down before you water your plants!" I called up, irritation returning but all the time trying to remind myself that courtesy is different in Italy to what it's like in Australia, America and the UK. Jumping the queue in Italy or parking your bike in the middle of a supermarket entrace obstructing entry for everyone else, is not done to be intensionally rude, it's just done as in this country courtesy rules don't apply to these two activities. So jump the queues and park your bike whereever you like and noone will be offended.

Anyway, back to my encounter with my nemice neighbour.

So, when I suggested she look down before watering her plants she responded with a pearler: "You always have your washing out!",

Uh! A cardinal sin: neighbour always drys washing.

I almost laughed before I realised she was deadly serious. Apparently, I had offended her and perhaps other neighbours by often drying my washing outside.

Irritation now reached anger. A few expletives ran freely from my mouth (swearing in Italian iss so much easier than speaking) and moved my washing inside.

So while the sun streams through my balconiesdwindows my washing is indoors. Instead of a few hours it will take at least a day to dry. The additional load which I washed this morning will now have to sit for a day in my machine before there is space to put it out to dry, or rather put it "in" to dry.

But the good news is my neighbours plants have been watered without being moved onto her balcony as a courtesy for her neighbours who may want to use their balconies without getting covered in wet dirt.

Either my neighbour is exactly what my earlier expletives suggested and my first nemice in Milan or I've missed some hidden laundry law here. If the law is anything like the Sky antennae law - we can't access Sky as a Sky antenna on the roof is thought to be aesthetically displeasing - then I'll be sure to let you know.