Frugality in Practice: Air-Dry Your Clothes (Even Indoors!)
Published on - July 12th, 2008 (by J.D. Roth) 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. Â 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.
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Great environmentally tip which also save your money and energy
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hi Joel….I had a bit of a laugh too! Here in Australia the hills hoist (clothesline) is iconic!…and of course hanging out your clothes to dry has always been the usual way to dry clothes. Its great to see others from overseas who are used to a certain way of drying their clothes looking at alternatives. Cheers…Jen V from Bris Australia
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!)
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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…
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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.”
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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!
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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!
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We recently started drying most of our clothes indoors. Works great!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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
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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.
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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
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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…)
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!
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It is interesting that everything old is new again…Might be the direction we are headed, The 2nd Age of Simplicity!
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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
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No dryer means no shrinking, right? That’s a big money saver.
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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/
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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