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Tiffany wrote with a quick energy-saving tip:
I hang up my wet clothes inside during the day to let them dry. When I get home from work, I put them in the dryer for about five minutes to get rid of the wrinkles. I don’t have a clothesline, but this works just as well.
I’m not familiar with hanging clothes to dry indoors, but I like the idea. Kris and I have actually begun experimenting with hanging our clothes outside. We had a failed attempt earlier in the year (line was too long, and it rains in Oregon). But now Kris has created a makeshift clothesline running from the maple tree to the raspberry arbor:
I’d like to install something more permanent. Some of our neighbors have real clotheslines, and maybe someday we will too. Fortunately, the internet is full of advice, so when the time comes to build one, it’ll be easy to do.
Here are some resources about air-drying clothes:
- Tip the Planet: All you ever wanted to know about air-drying your clothes
- Michael Bluejay: Tips on saving money on clothes drying
- Life in a Nutshell: How to build your own clothesline
Not everyone likes a clothesline. For them, Tiffany’s indoor drying tip could be a great alternative.
This article is about Clothing, Frugality Saturday, 12th July 2008 (by J.D. Roth)
July 12th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Great environmentally tip which also save your money and energy
July 12th, 2008 at 5:11 am
We recently got a clothesline pulley system from lehmans.com (which, incidentally, is a great place to visit if you’re ever in the Akron/Canton area). It’s 50 feet, runs from the shed to the house, and is high enough at one end to keep the dogs from shredding my sheets! The entire kit, including metal pulleys, plastic wrapped wire line, and mounting materials, was $35, and it will never sag or tear. Should last me near forever.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:23 am
I air dry most of my clothes inside. I put my nice shirts (the ones that aren’t dry clean only) on hangers and my jeans and running shorts on skirt hangers (with the clips).
The shower rod works great. I also have a plastic rod contraption that I bought at Target.
Not only does it save money, but my clothes last longer because they’re not beating around the dryer.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Wow—I had no idea you folks in the US had become so used to clothes dryers that clotheslines were used as ‘experiments’
I don’t mean any disrespect when I say that, by the way, just that the cultural differences between here (Australia) and there are good for a laugh. Here, practically every house has one, even apartments, and it’s a pretty common practice to use a small indoor clothes line that folds up after your done for those rainy days.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:45 am
I know Lehmans, have been there many times!
I belong to this group of people who believe that hanging clothes out save energy & etc:
http://www.laundrylist.org/index2.htm
I have hung out clothes for over 25 yrs & remember mom and grandma hanging them out. The $$$ savings is well worth it to me.
I also have these:
http://www.abundantearth.com/store/WoodenDryingRacks.html
of course the price has gone up on those since I bought mine, but they will last forever.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:04 am
We live in an apartment building. We installed clotheslines in our rooftop and we dry our clothes there. We don’t get any complaints because nobody can see it. (You can’t see it even if you use Google Earth) We hang our more delicate clothes in the ventilated laundry area inside our unit.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:11 am
become so used to clothes dryers
it’s not just getting used to them, in some places there are no alternatives - with condo/neighborhood associations forbidding clothes lines because they look poor (and take that any way you want, yes that is classist and not appropriate of them)
My Mom still has her clothesline in the back of her house, I love the smell of sheets that have been drying in the sun all day, aaah.
As for me, I will wash my clothes in the washer, but I take out skirts and blouses etc and hang them on the shower rod after giving each a good shake. I use less energy that way, and the clothes last longer because they have not gone through the wringer (so to speak) of the dryer.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:22 am
I forgot to add - Ikea has very reasonably priced drying racks. I have a freestanding one and a wall mount foldable one from them, both coated metal, and they are very useful.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Yes, Joel, in the U.S.A. hanging clothes out to dry, or “in” to dry in wet weather, is a lost art. It is sad sad sad.
And mr. blogperson…if you shake your clothes onces before haning them up, make sure they are hung straight with folds only at the seams (a shirt in the photo is crooked), or even on hangars, and pull on the shirts now and then while they are drying, there is no need for a quick tumble in the dryer. I rarely iron because I can dry my clothes fairly wrinkle free. A breeze helps with wrinkles too. If you are hanging things inside, put them over a forced-air heat vent or turn a fan on them if you are overly concerned with wrinkles.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:40 am
We’ve always had an outside clothes line. There’s a freshness about line dried clothes that you just can’t get with clothes that have been put through the dryer.
If you’re going to dry clothes inside, make sure you have them in a very well ventilated room. All that moisture has to go somewhere, and you don’t want it getting into your walls, believe me.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:44 am
As someone else touched on above - If you have a homeowner’s association check your covenants.
My neighborhood expressly forbids outside clothslines - Many others in this area do as well.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I love drying my clothes outside! I live just outside Boston, which means it’s an April-September activity, but I take full advantage during the summer months. We have a small rack for the winter months, but mostly use it for delicates.
Not using the dryer makes a big difference in energy bills. My summer electricity bills used to be about $80. We don’t have A/C, but have to use a dehumidifier in our partial basement apartment (or yucky mold can appear). Once, I stopped using the dryer in the summer, those bills dropped back to typical winter/spring levels, around $50-$60 per month.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Unfortunately, I live in an apartment, so I have to use a dryer for most of my clothes. I use a clothes horse (?) to dry my delicates. I grew up in the country and getting the clothes off the line and folding them was always my chore. I hated doing it, but loved the smell! Can’t wait till I have a home of my own so I can use a clothesline!
July 12th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Be careful if you live in a very humid climate like Florida!
Your clothes will never get dry! They will only get to “mostly” dry and you will have the lovely air of a musty mushroom about you the whole time you wear them.
(Heck, just yesterday I had put a load of work shirts in the wash at 9:00pm and then went to bed. When I got up at 6:00 and grabbed one out to put in the dryer I STILL ended up smelling like I had mold growing out of my armpits! Bleck!)
July 12th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Even after having lived in North America for half my life, it still seems so strange to me that many people have not even considered air drying their clothes…
July 12th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Line-dried clothes. That sure does bring back memories. I grew up with line-dried clothes up until I hit high school. I’m from TX, west TX actually, and fortunately it’s dry most of the time. We don’t have a real winter, maybe a month of cold weather, but the rest of the year is warm, blazing hot, or at least windy. Perfect weather for drying clothes outside. It was a huge luxury when we finally got a dryer, which we didn’t even purchase brand-new, an uncle got rid of his and we used it for about 7 years before having to replace it. Being a kid, I never knew if we did it to be frugal or if that was just normal, since both of my parents were born and raised in Mexico, and that’s what you did there, but either way, it brings back memories of mom (now gone) who would keep us kids busy by washing loads of clothes and making us hang them out and “check on them.”
July 12th, 2008 at 7:12 am
When I was a missionary in Mexico, I lived in an apartment that had a washing machine, but no dryer. Because we were gone most of the day and didn’t want to leave our clothes unattended, we’d hang them up on some clothes line that we ran through out the apartment. Worked like a charm!
July 12th, 2008 at 7:13 am
I live in a very dry climate and hanging our clothes to dry inside (especially during winter) really helps keep the house at a better level of humidity. I picked up all of my drying racks at garage sales for $1-2. Can’t beat that bargain when you think of the energy savings!
For a family with 3 very small kids, I am able to dry 1-2 loads of laundry on 3 large racks. I set my racks up in the hallway leading to the bedrooms, that way they are right there close to the closets!
July 12th, 2008 at 7:19 am
We recently started drying most of our clothes indoors. Works great!
July 12th, 2008 at 7:29 am
I’ve been drying the majority of my clothes on drying racks for years now. My clothing lasts far longer and it adds a bit of humidity to the great room.
July 12th, 2008 at 7:31 am
My Mom doesn’t have a dryer. Where I live, there’s enough privacy, but I rent and there’s no clothesline
I do have wooden racks for indoors, though. (I’ve thought about using it outdoors, but I don’t think the landlady would like it, or else she’d have a clothesline.
In the wintertime, I often use the humidifer. Using the wooden racks on the clothes and turning on the fans does help with the humidity level, though.
July 12th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I lived in Brazil for a couple of years and had to hand wash and hand dry all my clothes.
Line drying is great unless a) it rains or b) it gets cold.
If we hung clothes in the morning and it rained while we were gone, there would be tiny mold spots on the clothes when we got home at night (8-9 hours after leaving).
When it was cold it would take two or three days for the clothes to dry, and they’d end up smelling all musty.
July 12th, 2008 at 7:43 am
This is a debate that makes no sense to me - it’s an argument with an obvious solution and yet there is still a debate. If your housing association or neighbors are bothered by drying lines outside, I don’t understand why people who want to air dry their clothes don’t just get a folding rack or two - I think their called European racks. We have two - a large one and a smaller one, both of which can be moved where ever we want (if I hang clothes up outside, jeans and sheets go on the outside lines and undies on the inside for the dainty sensibilities of anyone looking on). I also hang dress shirts and dress pants on hangers on a rod. Beyond not using extra energy and saving a little money, it helps to humidify the air in the winter when the house can get a little dry. I usually hang the small rack in a corner of my daughter’s room in the winter. Plus it smells nice from the fabric softener.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Before I moved to Australia 10 years ago the only clothesline I saw was at my grandmother’s in West Texas. She seldom used it because her kids pitched in and bought her a dryer. Well, I was in for a bit of culture shock here because my partner didn’t have a dryer. Everyone in Australia has a clothesline
It took me a while to get used to hanging up my washing but now I’m pretty quick.
We could purchase a dryer if we wanted to but we don’t see the need. It saves us money and it’s good for the environment. If it’s raining we just bring our clothes inside and turn on our gas fire.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:40 am
A fan is a big help when drying clothes indoors. Turning an electric fan on full blast towards your drying clothes will really speed up the drying process. We learned this technique while living in the cool, damp Netherlands.
One note on why you would use a dryer anyways. A clothes dryer is a classic tradeoff of money versus time & convienence. A quick search provided a cost of about 40 cents US worth of electricity per load in an electric dryer. Sure a few bucks a week can be invested and turned into real money after a few decades. But that same few bucks a week is a whole lot cheaper than having someone else wash-dry-fold for so much a pound. For most people, getting their clothes clean is a chore. Using a dryer may be the extra convienence that makes the chore tolerable.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I wonder if people often challenge those rules (either town by-laws or condo association rules) about clotheslines. Where are the people who don’t like them, and really, what’s their problem?
In Montreal, almost every apartment in residential areas has one. We haven’t used our dryer at all this summer, and I don’t think we’ll use it for anything but sheets in wintertime (it’s difficult to dry those on a clothing rack!). Electricity is cheap here, but we still try to keep our bill as low as possible. Also, it makes my clothes last so much longer!
July 12th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Line drying is the norm in Europe as electricity is 6 times the price (30 cents a kilowatt hour) In sunny Spain clothes dry so quick that I haven’t used the dryer in over 2 years. In Germany more problematic as it’s wetter, solved by running a fan, everything dried overnight.
Brought home two cheap dyer racks for my sister in law as they are really hard to find in Canada
July 12th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Our provincial government in Ontario recently overturned any bans on clotheslines by homeowners associations/towns.
You can hang out your clothes to dry anywhere in the province without fear!
A nice move by our environmentally conscious government, I thought.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I grew up in a small town in Germany, where everybody had a rotary clothes line in the backyard. They fold up when not in use - h0w nifty is that? I’ve never seen them here in the US, but how about we start a new trend?
Start here:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Hoist
amazon.de for a nice picture of what I mean:
http://www.amazon.de/LEIFHEIT-85110-W%C3%A4schespinne-LINOMATIC-Plus/dp/B0001IP2NQ
July 12th, 2008 at 10:17 am
For those with a laundry room, installing a hanging bar (just like a closet) is an easy and affordable way to go. For me, 10 minutes in the dryer removes most of the wrinkles, then I hang items on hangers to fully dry.
The best part is that putting clothes back in the closet is a breeze, since everything’s already on hangers. (If you’re lazy about laundry like me, these things matter…)
July 12th, 2008 at 10:24 am
i’ve always hung my clothes. in the summers i hang them outside because nothing beats clothes that have been air dried outdoors under the sun. in the winters, i have a clothesline in the laundry room that runs from one end to the other. when i moved into my house 22 years ago i passed up on the dryer because i remember the high cost of electricity my mother had. we were young and we were looking for ways to save money and this was one of the areas. years later when we finally could “afford” a dryer, i passed again. i had been used to it and felt i didn’t need it nor wanted it. as a result, i have one of the lowest electricity bills of friends and family members that i know of.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:28 am
We’ve used a drying rack for heavier items such as towels and jeans. Solomon is right, be sure that the room is ventilated or you’ll just boost the humidity inside the home, which makes it feel hotter and the air conditioner work harder.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I’m Indian so not a stranger to the clothesline. I utilize my dryer for towels, sheets and other large items but frequently dry every days clothes inside and put them into the dryer for a few minutes to get out the wrinkles just as suggested in the tip. Not only is this energy efficient it’s also better for the clothes. They last a lot longer and retain their true color - especially blacks! Great tip!
July 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I dry my clothes similar to Tiffany. I would love to hang out my clothes, but like a lot of other posters on here, I live in an apartment complex. If I were allowed to hang clothes on my balcony in the first place, I would not do it at this point because my neighbor (who has the other half of the balcony) sits outside and smokes throughout the day. It’s bad enough that I can’t have my windows open without the smoke wafting into my apartment, but I don’t want my clothes smelling smoky either. I can’t wait until we are able to utilize an outdoor clothesline, though!
July 12th, 2008 at 11:56 am
It is interesting that everything old is new again…Might be the direction we are headed, The 2nd Age of Simplicity!
July 12th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I am a firm believer of drying clothes outside, but inside is just not sensible in my eyes. All the water that dries gets absorbed into the floors, walls and ceiling. HIGHLY increases your chances for mold and mildew.
My two cents
July 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
No dryer means no shrinking, right? That’s a big money saver.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
My household’s electricity bill is half of the national average, and guess what: we dry most of our clothes on a line in our basement. We also wash in cold water. Shared values like these have given us happy finances and also an unusually happy marriage. I explain this further at http://www.diamondcutlife.org/diamond-cut-sustainable-marriage/
July 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
My sister just put up a clothes line. She says she’s wanted one for years. She’s lived in this house for 15 years, and she’s just putting one up now. I would love a clothes line. Because I live in a 3 room apartment, I can’t put one up and there’s no room to put up an indoor type of one. I don’t even have a shower rod. I dream of the day I’ll own a home and have a clothes line. I love the smell of freshly dried clothes off the line.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
It helps if washed clothing are no dripping wet and reasonably dry before put to hang. Sometimes you might need to put the clothes to spin dry for another round in the washing machine. It seems if there is extra moisture in the clothing while they are put to hang, they will tend to stink even when dry.
You can dry lots of clothes even in small apartments. Just use a combination of a foldable clothes rack and hangers. All the shirts can go on hangers and lined at the sides, and everything else like towels and larger stuff can stay in the middle of the rack. Balance the weight of the shirts on both sides so the rack does not topple over.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Americans don’t dry clothes indoors? Haven’t any of you ever been poor college students?? I live in a condo in Toronto and we dry clothes indoors all year round. (There’s a stupid condo-association rule against drying clothes on the balcony, and it’s very dusty out there besides.)
Get a rack, get a fan, it works fine.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
We’ve been line drying for a couple of years now - indoors in the winter and outdoors in the summer (in Connecticut). The first winter I used the eye hooks and cord that a previous owner had strung from the rafters in the basement, but I’m not terribly tall so hanging was not my favorite chore. Last fall I bought a drying rack from IKEA that I love: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50095091 It folds flat for storage too, so it would be ideal for an apartment.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
If your clothes line becomes droopy you can prop it up with a board/stick. Place two lines on the same spots on each of the posts and you can use a different board/stick to spread the lines out. Putting a nail near each of the ends of the board will help catch the line and prevent the board from slipping. Draping large items like sheets and towels across both allow for better airflow and quicker dry time. This is a trick I picked up in the tropics.
July 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I always hang-dry my delicates indoors - it increases their natural lifespan. No bent underwires, minimizes wear and tear… I do the same for my wrinkle-free or minimal wrinkling dress clothes with the same results. Replacing clothing less frequently = money saved!
July 12th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Aaah, the fresh smell of sheets dried outside!
At my old house I had a clothesline, but I haven’t found a suitable location at my new house, so I’ve just been using a drying rack (handy for if it starts to rain, I just carry it inside) and the backs of the patio chairs.
All last winter I used the drying rack indoors….that added humidity is good in winter.
A drying rack isn’t a lot of space but I generally do one load per day, first thing in the am, then hang out my clothes and by afternoon, they’re dry. In the winter, they might not be dry til the next morning, but I’d just fold them then and hang up the newly washed clothes.
July 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I have a horizontal pole hanging in my laundry room, and I hang most wet laundry on plastic hangers. You need a bunch of heavy duty skirt/pants hangers for pants and small towels.
I have these wonderful spider things that are a circle with 10 little suspended clips - got one at Ikea for maybe 6$ and it’s awesome. I have one from the dollar store, too, but it’s kind of flimsy. But it’s perfect for hanging smaller items - socks, underweark, handkerchiefs, napkins.
Here’s a picture
http://moneychangesthings.blogspot.com/2007/10/clothespin-wielding-radicals.html
an additional benefit to adding humidity to your home air - your clothes and linens last longer.
I drape the sheets over open doors, by the way.
Now when I see people putting flannel sheets or towels in a dryer and running it for an hour I think they the biggest wasters imaginable. Of course I did the same thing before I got more resource thrifty.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I’ve dried my clothes indoors for a while now and have rarely had any problems — even in humid Florida. My husband put a pipe over the dryer. I hang the clothes right there on their hangers. It saves me time that way, too and I’ve never noticed a big problem with wrinkles (though I guess that would depend on the material and I try not to buy a lot of wrinkle-prone things).
July 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Growing up, my parents always hung clothes outside to dry, and we also hand washed all of our clothes. Now that they’re older, they use a washer but still hang dry clothes in the garage.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Yet another non-American not getting this at all.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where people actually used a dryer as a matter of course, and I haven’t had access to one for several years now. As far as I know, most people dry their clothes outside - even in England where it rains quite often.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I recently started hanging my clothes as well. We recently got the electric bill and nearly died when we saw how much our power-greedy appliances were using. The air conditioner, television, computer, and even the drier have all been put on restrictive diets since then. With the beautiful weather outside, I wonder why we didn’t think of line-drying our clothing sooner!
Even though it’s a bit more time consuming to hang up your clothes, it’s refreshing to be outside (or walking through long-forgotten corners of your house) doing something simple.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I love using my 40 foot retractable clothesline that I found at Lowes. I have it installed on one side of my balcony with some hooks on the opposite side so I can pull out the line and then backtrack so I have 2 rows of clothesline. When I’m not using it, it’s retracted and out of the way and stays clean and protected from the weather. It comes with some clothespins; however, I prefer regular wood & metal spring clothespins.
Here’s what it looks like:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=159213-11112-R-400L
When it’s raining outside I can hang clothes (on hangers) on the top of the inside doorframes. I also have a loft area with a banister railing that works perfectly as a hanging spot.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
J.D., would you talk about couples and finances? Do you and Kris keep your finances separate?
July 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Sometimes Mother Nature works against you. I’ve tried setting up a clothesline, but the local chipmunks, squirrels chew the line and birds flying over have a tendency to, ahem, negate the cleaning process.
I bought a drying rack at a local hardware store that works just fine. If I’m in a bind and need something to dry faster, I set up a fan in front of the drying rack. I’ve been able to dry wool sweaters overnight using this technique.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
A couple of pointers based on your photo:
1. For heavy items like towels, peg as close to one end of the towel as you can, leaving a greater amount of single layer of fabric: a doubled over towel will take twice as long to dry.
2. Always wash your clothes inside out and hang to dry inside out: the sun will fade the inside of your garment (which noone will see) rather than the outside.
3. Before pegging out T shirts, fold with the shoulders together, then grab the bottom edges and give a yank downwards to straighten the seamlines. And don’t stretch the bottom across the line otherwise you’ll end up with flared T shirts!
July 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
We don’t have a dryer at all. I dry our clothes outside in summer, and on drying racks inside during winter. Cheap and better for the environment.
With the amount of greenhouse gas a dryer produces it might be time to start challenging your homeowners’ association’s covenants for the sake of the environment.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
People who have pollen allergies or live in high-pollution areas have a very real problem drying clothes outside at all. With my allergies, outdoors line-drying of any kind (especially for bed linens or nightclothes) simply is not possible for me. Instead, I’ll dry anything that isn’t sheets or towels on drying racks inside, and put the sheets/towels into the dryer for a short spin. Best of both worlds, and it means that I can breathe at night.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Luv hanging up my clothes. I found an inexpensive clothes rack at Target, which resides near the washer in the garage. Also I strung two lengths of clothesline between wood hooks screwed into the rafters over the westside deck. This shelters the clothes from most birds and to some extent from any snobbish neighborly gaze. Sometimes, too, I’ll put damp clothes on plastic hangers and hang them from the door frames inside the house.
When I was a kid, clothes hangers were made of steel, which rusted. So you couldn’t hang damp laundry on them. But with plastic hangers…ta da! True wash-n-wear! If you take a knit shirt and carefully align the shoulder seams along the hanger, you can put the hanger up anywhere–on a line outside, on a rack, or over the doorframe. Check the label, though: if it says “dry flat” it may stretch out of shape if hung to dry.
I sling my jeans over two hangers, one leg over each hanger, and hang them so maximum air can circulate around the garment. If I feel industrious after they’re dry, I iron them. If I’m rushed or lazy, I toss the dried pair of jeans in the dryer for five minutes or so, which shakes them soft and eliminates most wrinkles.
So quiet! No motor running, no bumping and thumping, no nerve-grating buzzer. Ahhh!
July 12th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Forgot to add - for the person concerned about the water from drying clothes inside getting into the walls and floors, it’s not like they come out of the washer sopping wet. The humidity’s no worse than what you get from having a goldfish bowl, particularly in winter when you’ve likely got the heating on which is drying out the air.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’ve air dried my clothes the entire time I’ve lived alone. I hate spending money on apartment dryers. Plus I figure it must help my clothes last longer.
We always dried out clothes outside in the warm months. Now my parents have the HE washer and dryer, and I don’t know if my mother still uses the clothesline. I’m in Canada.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I’ve been air drying my clothes for the last 30 years. Put shirts on hangers and place on shower rods. Since my w/d is in the garage, I also have a clothes rack for underclothes, sox, pants, etc. Sheets go on the shower rods, too. The only things I really use the dryer for are towels because I don’t like the way they feel when they are air dried.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I have to say this post made me laugh. Living In Australian air drying clothes outside is just a way of life. I know plenty of people who don’t own clothes dryers but I don’t know anyone who deosn’t have a clothesline. I don’t have a dryer and everything of my husband’s and mine is either dried on our line in our tiny courtyard or hung over the stair rail and a small rack inside. I’ve never really thought of this as being frugal- its just the way things are. It can be a bit of a pain in winter and in summer Sydney has a very high rainfall (even higher than London) but nothing beats white sheets that have been been dried in the sun .
July 13th, 2008 at 4:55 am
I saved a whole $85 a year by line drying. Is it even worth the hassle?
Betty
July 13th, 2008 at 5:31 am
These are all splendid ideas. But I have to schlep my laundry to another town to use the laundrymat. I’m not going to wash them and then schlep them all wet back to my apartment to hang them up in my tiny apartment. Sorry. If I ever own a home, the first thing I’ll build is a clothes line. In the meantime, it’s the laundrymat for me.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:58 am
My mom lives in a historically rural area that is becoming increasingly developed. She has always line-dried her clothes outside, but some of her new neighbors are now complaining about how clotheslines make the neighborhood “look poor.” My mom says that in her neighborhood, you can’t tell the poor people from the millionaires, but you can spot the people with no sense a mile coming.
Where I live now, our homeowners association forbids outdoor clotheslines, but they allow draping wet items over deck railings to dry as long as those items are left for no longer than 48 hours. So I drape our laundry over the deck railings. It looks incredibly trashy, but it beats using the clothes dryer, which not only uses energy itself, but also makes our small house so uncomfortably warm that we end up running the air conditioning, too.
July 13th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I’m the same, Beth. The poor college students line up near the top made me laugh because poor college students don’t have money for their own washer, tend to wash everything at once (yesterday, I filled five washers and two dryers, plus two drying racks at home), and do not have space for a drying rack. It’s cheaper to spend 25c/7min than to move to an upscale apartment with its own coin washer in the kitchen.
A couple friends of mine have a clothesline in their backyard, but they never use it. When they do, they get little black bugs in *everything*.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Having grown up in the UK, everyone (as I remember it) had an outdoors clothesline and no one had a dryer. We made it work even in that extremely unpredictable weather. I started hanging our clothes out to dry about a year ago. I feel like the neighborhood renegade but that’s fine! I’m sure by now the neighbors are used to seeing my grogs out on the line and I don’t care. I’m saving money and resources and I feel totally fine with that. I am looking for a smaller house to buy and one of the factors that will clinch the deal for me is having somewhere for a “washing line” as the Brits call it. Once you go “clothesline” you should never go back!!!
July 13th, 2008 at 10:02 am
I dry light duty stuff indoors, on a $20 wood rack from Target. In addition, I have a box fan setup to speed up drying process.
Heavier stuff, like cotton blanks, towels, and blue jeans still go to a real dryer, otherwise they might pickup mildew. I don’t care about mild mildew odor, but some family members have complained in the past.
At a minimum, air drying color clothing makes them last longer, so you could save substantially by not replacing clothing so often.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
JD, thank you for this suggestion! I’m ashamed to admit that, although I’m very energy frugal in most ways, line drying my clothes had not occurred to me, even though my family had a rotary clothes line (like Elkit linked to) when I was growing up. But since I live in Texas, where the average summer temperature is 95+, and have a big back yard, I have the perfect set up for line drying.
So today I have spent the afternoon going out to the garden to dry sheets and clothes. The sheets dried in less than an hour in the hot breeze, the shirts and shorts are taking about 2 hours.
I have been really enjoying the experience - especially listening to the birds as I put up the items. I often avoid going outside in the summer because “it’s too hot” but today it’s over 100 degrees and it’s perfect out. Maybe handling the damp laundry makes me feel cooler.
I’ve also noticed that the A/C is running a lot less than it usually does on laundry day - I guess in a hot climate that it’s pretty stupid to run an appliance that generates heated air while running another that generates cooled air.
And yes - my neighborhood association covenants ban clotheslines, but I don’t care. They also ban pick up trucks and lots of people have those. I really like the suggestion about getting the city council to rule that such bans are illegal - Austin is set on becoming one of the greenest cities in Texas, and line drying our clothes fits in with that goal!
July 13th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I dry some bulky items outside, like comforters or large beach towels. I still use the clothes dryer for most items. I wonder how many people grew up using a clothesline? My parents didn’t and I’m sure this has an impact for many.
July 13th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
We hang clothes on plastic hangers on a regular closet pole running across the laundry room. Very cheap, takes up much less space than a clothes rack, and dries more at a time than a clothesline. Works year-round, in any weather, too, though really humid days can be a problem.
July 13th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I have a foldout drying rack that I got from Target, and I use it to dry just about everything indoors.
July 13th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
In Hungary, we use drying racks. They’re great. Most people don’t have dryers. I’m visiting my mother in America right now. She has a dryer. I find it very inconvenient actually.
The way it works in Hungary, is that I have a washing machine. It is very loud, especially at the end when it gets the water out as best it can. I can hear from any part of the apartment that it’s doing this and can hear it stop. Then I hang the clothes on the drying rack where they don’t get wrinkled and I can hang them up at my leisure over the next few days, or return to the drying rack for clothes when I want to get dressed in the mornings.
The way it works in America is that my mother has a washing machine. I put clothes in it and detergent and turn it on. It is very quiet. I can’t hear when it stops working so I forget to take the clothes out. Eventually, I remember and put them into the dryer. The dryer is also very quiet and I can’t hear when it stops. I go to the dryer when I want to get dressed and take out some wrinkled clothes and put them on.
Very inconvenient. Without a dryer I can have unwrinkled clothes hanging, waiting for me to put them away at my convenience. But a dryer wants me to sit and watch it dry (because I can’t hear it stop) and then put clothes away immediately (not at my convenience). Maybe I should buy my mom a drying rack. I didn’t know they had them in America.
July 14th, 2008 at 4:03 am
We’ve been using a drying rack for years. Besides saving some electricity, it also makes sure your clothes don’t shrink. If you have a bunch of little (but growing) kids around, to have your clothes shrinking is not good.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:07 am
When I lived in Germany, there were lines in the boiler room of the apartment building where we hung stuff in damp weather, which worked nicely.
For mystified foreigners, the contemporary US attitude is that a house is an “investment” and its resale value must be protected (Americans tend to move a lot). I stay the heck out of those kinds of neighborhoods, myself–when a neighborhood has been there for fifteen years and the houses still all look alike, that’s just plain creepy.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I hate line dried clothes. They feel stiff and smell funny. I hated having to put up everything after the wash cycle. I like my HE dryer much better!
July 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I also agree that using a dryer, even for a short period is helpful for softening the clothes and also getting out wrinkles. I’m sorry, I do the laundry, and don’t like to iron! Fortunately we have a front loading washer that is so effective at wringing out water, it only takes 10, 15 minutes in the dryer to dry most everything. For stuff that takes longer or I’m not worried about wrinkling, we have clotheslines in our back screened porch, plus use our bed, hang up clothes on hangers to flat dry or line dry items inside the house. A screened in porch is a great alternative because it is not as noticeable as outside lines but you still get the benefit of the (free) warm air.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I highly recommend drying racks with vinyl-coated rods (available at BB&B or LnT). My all-wood ones mildewed with heavy use, even when I rubbed them with sandpaper.
I’d love to line-dry clothing, but our woodsy area means bird turds galore.
July 14th, 2008 at 10:58 am
We have line dried our clothes indoors for years. We put them on hangers, hang them in the closet and leave the door open. We’ve never had a problem with mildew either. From time to time during the summer we have hung the clothes in a bathroom which cools it off very nicely.
I have to agree with Jesse. My husband was the one who initially insisted we do this since we had to make the kids’ clothes last as long as possible. Not using the dryer helps prevent against shrinking, fading and premature wear.
We still use the dryer for linens, socks and underwear.
July 14th, 2008 at 11:09 am
If I leave even slightly moist clothes out, they mildew and mold, what would prevent this from occuring on a line? Is this just not going to happen down here in this humid crescent city?
July 14th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I had put my clothes outside on the line to dry but I’m going to stop that now,,reasons:
1. My Clothing are going to fade.(of the sun)
2. Some of them say DRY IN THE SHADE,, and there is a lot of sun here because I live Aruba.
So I’m not going to take the risk of letting my clothing get faded or such as. So the dryer’s for me.
July 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’ve always dried delicate clothes indoors, which ver the years has expanded to include all of my teeshirts (they’re fitted and I don’t want them to shrink) and jeans (since they have spandex in them these days). I dry underwear and bras draped over the frame of my IKEA laundry bag (it has a removable bag), and now I have a canopy bed and one day realized — hey! Fantastic laundry bar on all four sides! But the shower rod is just a way of life to me, since my mom always dried delicates that way. Just lay ‘em on the toilet or smoosh them together on the towel bars when you need a shower; fifteen minutes won’t kill them.
Towels, shirts and my husband’s cotton shirts and pants go in the dryer, though, because like someone says above I don’t have the time to iron. My in-laws live in Spain and line-dry everything, and watching her iron *sheets* was depressing.
July 14th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
My boyfriend and I have to go to a laundromat because we don’t have a washer and drier. We wash all of our clothing in one load on delicate with warm water, then we throw everything in the dryer for 7 minutes to soften them up and release the wrinkles. This all costs $2. We don’t have many white items, mostly darker things or brights.
We have a converted room in the attic of our apartment which has a bay window and excellent ventilation. Along with growing our vegetables up there, we have strung a cheap vinyl rope zig-zag across the room. We hang our clothes there and they dry within the day.
I don’t know about big cities here in the States, I have always lived in the country, but most people I know use a clothesline at the very least in the summer.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I’ve recently discovered the joys of line drying, since I am using cloth diapers on my newborn. The first time I dried them in the dryer, they took over an hour on high to dry. Since I wash the diapers every other day, I knew I had to find a better solution or my gas bill would be sky high. If you put them on the line, they are dry in only a few hours, plus the stains come right out. Then I stick them in the dryer for ten minutes to make them softer for my son’s bum!
At first I was worried that my city had some sort of ordinance against outdoor clothes lines. So I bought two retractable clothes lines from Walmart that we installed on our deck. No one can even see them.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
We love our Breezecatcher http://www.mossbackfarm.com/archive/000226.html
In Oregon, we find June-Sept, generally no problem to dry outside. Some of May, and some of Oct, mostly ok. The rest of the year, not so much…..
The only downside can be that the clothes get a little crunchy…my wife likes her towels (and the baby’s diapers) soft, so some things may get tossed in the dryer for a brief spell to soften them up.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:15 am
I live in Beijing, where every apartment comes with an enclosed terrace for the purpose of drying clothes indoors. Mine even comes with a set of adjustable clothing rails that I can pull up and down to catch the sun. My friend in rainy Scotland also had a similar system, conveniently positioned right above her washer.
When it’s very humid, as it is right now in the midst of Beijing’s rainy season, we simply open our windows and let the air circulate, which takes care of potential mildew. (Although, for us, we have problems with the city’s notorious pollution.)
In the past I’ve also had the drying racks, and they are great. My clothes smell nice and the racks fold up neatly.
I’m finding this thread to be very interesting for its cultural insights, because even though I’m American, I did not know that it was not the done thing in America to dry clothes outdoors. I grew up in Southern California, and we’ve never had a dryer. On the other hand, we never had to–it was sunny 90% of the time and we just hung our clothes up in the clothesline in the backyard.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am
When my hubby and I bought our first house earlier this year, it did not come with a washer and dryer. We opted to buy an Energy Star washing machine, and the rather steep (for us) price tag on that ensured that we couldn’t afford a dryer. We’ve been air-drying our clothes ever since, and have no plans to buy a dryer. Even here in the humid Southeast, it works perfectly.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
yet another person who uses an indoor clothes drying routine. I’ve dried my clothes only three times this year (and all of these were times when I was housesitting). I use a flat folding “mangle” from ikea to hang up one load at a time. I’ve also got a little over door rack from Ikea that folds down when I need it, and I use that for socks.
When I studied abroad in the Netherlands, we didn’t even own a dryer, so I got in the habit of hang drying stuff there. Same deal with my brother when he studied abroad in New Zealand. Seems like the US has quite different habits from the rest of the world, as even my fairly eco-friendly friends can’t believe I don’t use a dryer more regularly.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I like to hang dry my clothes for various reasons, and what works for me is that I put clothes on wide plastic hangers…..
July 17th, 2008 at 7:58 am
If I hang out my clothes, someone will steal them. I own a home in an urban area; ah, the beauty of city life!!
July 17th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
We dry our clothes inside, pretty much exclusively. The only time we use the dryer is for sheets and towels (mostly because we don’t have space to dry them once the clothes are up).
We bought two Ikea drying racks and they’re wonderful. I can only imagine how much money we’ve saved in the last year.
We only had a washer and used the dryer in the building. Now that we have both, we still hardly use the dryer.
July 18th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Reading all these comments make me realize how privileged I’ve been, having a dryer or access to one all my life. I hang most of my laundry now, but I have to admit it’s not so much about saving money as it is about saving energy. My true motivation, though, the part that makes me keep at it when it would be easier to throw the laundry into the dryer, is nostalgia: I feel a connection to my grandmother and her mother and beyond when I hang my laundry. Also, while I hate folding and putting away, hanging the laundry feels like a break from other chores. I like the repetitive lift, shake, pin, lift - it’s almost meditative.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:51 am
I’ve been told drying your laundry outside is supposed to be healthier than using a dryer. Apparently the sunlight helps to kill some germs. Plus just having the laundry aired outside does seem to make a difference to how fresh the laundry seems to be when it’s dried.
I try to limit use of the dryer to when I have no choice.
July 28th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Being from a country where line-drying is the norm, I wonder where is the “hassle”. It takes 5 minutes to hang them and you just need a little room to do it not even that much. My house is very small and in winter I manage to do it in my bathroom!
You can wait some time for the clothes to dry, can’t you? The dryer seems like an unnecessary luxury to me.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:46 am
I have a drying rack for inside the house, because our mobile home park does not permit outside clothes lines. I have always done delicate and personal items this way, as they last longer.
I got the drying rack at a garage sale and I bought some wooden clothes pins.
I tend to be careful about how much laundry I do, anyway, but this helps reduce it further.
(When I was in an apartment, I hung them in the shower.)
Anything made of nylon (bathing suits, undergarments, pantyhose) will last much longer and won’t pill. Bras will not loose their shape, or underwire.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
The clothesline is a great idea for saving money. However, if you are allergic to anything outdoors, that could be a bad idea. When wet clothes are outside, pollen and other dusty things stick to them easily. I like the idea of drying them indoors better!
August 5th, 2008 at 5:33 am
I live in Brazil and they have these great retractable clothes lines that can be installed in the laundry room..takes no floor space….
Just to give you an idea I put a link below
http://www.varalkit.com.br/varal_teto.gif
September 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
incidentally, we’ve begun to try air/sun-drying our clothes outside too instead of using the dryer!
http://www.financialwellnessproject.org/2008/09/08/sun-drying-my-clothes-to-save-a-bit-of-energy/
it is actually somewhat fun — we get to be out in the sun for sure for at least a few minutes, a tiny bit of exercise, and saving energy. it is quite satisfying.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:17 am
You could air dry your clothes indoors throughout the year, even if you think you don’t have space for a drying rack.
Take a look at the unique Ceiling Drying Rack at http://www.airdry.org
It’s a drying rack that you can use all year to air dry your clothes. It attaches to the ceiling and let you dry your clothes by pulling them and hanging near the ceiling. It doesn’t take any floor space and I have mine installed in a laundry room near washer/dryer. It’s kind of hard to describe without seeing, but you can take a look for yourself at their website http://www.airdry.org. I was able to reduce the use of my electric dryer by at least 75%, not too mention it’s also so much more gentle on your clothes.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:31 am
I find it depressing that drying your clothes on a line is associated with being “lower class”. My parents have always hung clothes outside to dry (in Yorkshire) and the dryer is really a last resort when there’s not enough space on the airer and it’s too wet to put out the laundry. I lived in a flat with no outside space and dried an absolute minimum of jeans and towels, simply because otherwise they would take too long to dry and smell musty. Everything else went on my cast-off airer (it had been my mothers, and was in perfect condition until my housemate started using it…now it looks a bit crippled, bent and old!) or over a radiator. Long live the washing line!
August 14th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
This seems to be a novel idea here…..We have known this idea and put it into practice since 1988. It only took one winter in the north-east US to figure out the cost of ‘natural gas bills’.
Environment, Pocket-book, Slight Inconvenience, and large/thick clothes……This was our reason to buy those wooden racks, create more moisture in the home in winter in the house (drying clothes in house in winter = more moisture naturally). We do it in the summer also, but we do it out on the deck with a clothes line.
It has saved approx $25 per month of gas bills x 20 years x Interest = $6000 This along with other things have allowed us to pay off our house at age 41, and with an even bigger home purchase, just did that in cash also.
Its ALL ABOUT CHOICES of where to SPEND MONEY, and choosing not to live on someone elses (Bank or CC) money. Being a student of math and finance, I understand leverage, but that stuff is good for business, not for personal life.
These are good choices for all young people to learn. Please do the best you wish, but ‘think and choose wisely’.
Kenny