We've hung clothes out (or in) to dry for the past nine years during the days when the sun shines regardless of the temperature. I just drape them over the backyard furniture or hang them from the top of the door jambs on hangers. It's true that clothes last longer hang dried. Washed in cold water, my favorite t-shirts and jeans seem to never wear out or fade.

A trick to try on cloudy/rainy days is to pull out a few of the larger items from the washer and only stick in the drier the smaller items. That cuts down the gas usage considerably.

Anyone have any good luck with a particular clothes drying rack or stand?? I need to advance beyond draping them over the furniture. Locally, the stores have nothing other than lines.

EastBay

Well, I have to confess I shop at Walmart. But, that's because in the little town I live it's pretty much the only store. I bought a couple of really nice accordian style wood drying racks that stand about 5 feet tall when set up. They hold quite a bit of clothes.



Jodi

Actually, electric ovens suck down the juice a lot quicker than dryers. Air conditioners and dehumidifiers are pretty bad too.

Folding dryer racks: this might be a good one:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/awesome-clo ... index.html

Instant indoor clothes lines (and cheap too!): If you have door and/or window frames that happen to be located across from each other, you can screw little hooks into them and then make up lengths of clothes line with loops at each end that slip over the hooks.
These can be put up or taken down quickly as needed. You can set up a bunch of locations in advance so you have excess capacity available for large wash days.

Caution: Do Not set up clothes lines in proximity to "wall furnace" and "floor furnace" type heaters (serious fire hazard) unless you plan to keep a close watch on the clothes that are hanging there, and turn off the heat any time you're not watching.

Went to Walmart yesterday and bought a cute 19.95 wooden dowel construction stand-up clothes drying rack. It's about 4 feet tall and holds abour one medium load of clothes. I hung out the wet clothes to try it out and take advantage of the sunny early afternoon and was pleased that the clothes weren't draped all over the yard furniture as they were in the past.

Then the wind picked up and blew the stand over, clothes and all. Looks like I need to do this in the early morning before the daily afternoon wind starts.

EastBay

Bungee cords and stakes to hold it down maybe?

Bungee cords?? lol... it's now 1230 and no wind yet... rather than pound nails into my house stucco I'll live around the wind... yesterday was unusually windy and stormy.

EastBay

Those drying racks are designed for use *indoors*, so try putting it inside, next to a particularly sunny window. And/or opening the window slightly to provide a light breeze around the rack. Added benefit of indoor drying racks: the drying clothes put a little more humidity into the indoor air, which is helpful in the winter months when indoor heating can otherwise cause the air to become uncomfortably low in humidity.

Interesting that the drying-rack is about the capacity of one washer-load. That's good industrial-process design, where every element in a system is of compatible capacity.

For outdoors, there are outdoor clothes lines including one that consists of a vertical pole with a rectangular frame at the top, and around the frame are the actual clothes lines. An outer sleeve for the pole gets mounted in concrete in the same manner as a basketball hoop, the main pole slides into that, and it can rotate so you can hang the wash from one standing position.

When not in use drying clothes, one can always hang some potted plants from the corners of the frame, thereby pacifying any neighbors who might be more concerned with what's going on in your back yard than they rightly should be:-). Though, you do not want to encourage birds or squirrels to think of this as a place to hang out. Bird poop carries cryptosporidia, and squirrels carry fleas which in turn carry bubonic plague (both of which are easily enough sterilized by normal sunlight).

Outdoor clothes lines also entail re-gaining the old skill of properly using clothes pins. It's not as obvious as it looks; the key here being, use lots of clothes pins in order to keep the wind from pulling your stuff off the line.

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At present I'm waiting for a few more components for my graywater system. At that point I'll be able to split the laundry into a Wednesday wash and a Saturday wash, saving the final rinse water from each to use as the first wash water for the next (and then using the used wash-water to get all the toilet-flushes I need during each week). Early experiments indicate that saving rinse water for over a week (plus a little bleach) does not lead to any "odd smells" in the stored water that would indicate the water is going bad, so saving that water for a half-week will not be a problem.

Splitting the laundry into two separate days' washes, will also make better use of my indoor clotheslines. These are now on the main floor, which makes them a whole heck-of-a-lot easier to use than the old ones up in the attic. The ones in the attic required climbing the step ladder through the trap-door to get to them, and working from a semi-crouched position to use them. The new ones on the main floor are accessible from a normal standing position.

I set a load to dry outside yesterday around noon, went to work, worked until very late, and when I got up this afternoon at 1pm the rack was still standing and the clothes were all dry!!

There was moderate wind, no sun, only low clouds. This $19.95 rack is going to work just fine. It'll pay for itself in about 8 weeks or so.

Too cool.

Eastbay

As of today, I haven't used my gas dryer in almost 2 months. And it's winter. Once weather is warmer, I'll go back to my outside line. Makes me think i should look into just selling the useless thing.




Jodi

EastBay: Score! And every 8 weeks you could put another $20 aside in a "conservation savings" fund; that's about $120 per year; which could go into part of an extra mortgage payment or some other household improvement or just recreation. Concrete savings.

JR: Don't ditch the dryer, there are occasions where it might be needed. For example, in the winter when someone gets sick, and you want to sanitize their clothes but cloudy/rainy/etc. weather prevents taking advantage of outdoor line-drying & solar UV. Or if your dog/cat/kids get fleas/ticks/lice/whatever and you need to sanitize their clothing/bedding/etc.

The dryer, just sitting there (presumably unplugged, and if it's a gas dryer, not using a pilot light), is innocent enough; it's another piece of household capital equipment that will be more difficult to replace later. The way I look at stuff like that is, if you've got it, keep it for limited usage, just don't over-use it.

Drying clothes inside during the winter requires having the heater on at least some of the time or the clothes will hang there damp for several days. That's not a very good idea. We've kept the heater off just about all winter. We call it 'free air con'. For those who go 'ccoler' it's cheaper to simply use the clothes dryer on those 55 to 60 degree (inside) nights rather than heat the whole house to dry a load of clothes. If its sunny outside the clothes will dry fine as long as its above 50 or so.

EastBay

We keep our house at about 60 degrees and the clothes on our drying rack seem to be drying out in about 12 hours (?) more or less. That doesn't count towels, sheets, or jeans which we still stick in the dryer.

The key is our super washing machine which spins the clothes until they are only slightly damp when they come out. It is a Fisher Paykel, got it at Lowe's, it was highly recommended and cost much less than super efficient washers of other companies. It is highly water and energy efficient.

EastBay: Good going there with the rack staying put all day!

I keep geek-hours, which means up late enough every night that the place gets quite cold and it becomes necessary to turn on the heat for a few hours. On laundry nights, that does help dry the stuff quickly. Once the weather gets decent I won't need to do that. I'll just run a fan to keep some air circulating, and that's 60 watts on high speed, so a few hours of that = maybe a quarter of a kilowatt-hour for drying a load.

A week ago, my bed sheets came out of the twin-tub so dry that they only took three hours on the indoor clothes lines before they were absolutely bone-dry and ready to put back on the bed. The longest drying time I've had with this machine and the indoor lines was a little over 24 hours, i.e. hang the stuff in the evening, it's dry the next evening. And that was when it was damp & rainy outside. I recall pretty clearly that when I was using a standard washer, it always took longer because the laundry never came out as dry as it does with the machine I have now.

I'd rather have an outdoor clothes line because I like the idea of using solar UV to sanitize. However there is no way to do it where I live, without having to worry about a) soot and dust in the air, and b) opportunistic theft by homeless scavengers.

Ish: Fisher Paykel has a good reputation; presumably a front-loader. Given that you keep the place at 60 all the time, chances are we're both getting simlar results in terms of spin efficiency. I hang my jeans and towels above the floor-heater, so even if it's off, there's a slight current of less-humid air coming up from the pilot light area, and that helps get the jeans dry, overnight.

On the other hand, if I were also a "we" i.e. had a partner or other housemate(s) of whatever kind (not to mention kids), we'd have that much more laundry to do, and either a) have to wash a couple loads each night due to space limitations on the indoor clothes lines, or b) have to use the dryer for large or heavy items.


Wearing clean clothes, sleeping between clean sheets, curling up under clean blankets, and drying off after a hot shower with clean towels, etc., are among the wonderful benefits that go along with civilization. And like most civilized values and their modes of expression, not hard to preserve in a world of growing scarcity. It only takes a bit of thought and foresight.

I have a clothes airer - basically a foldable metal rack where I put my clothes to dry. It occupies little space and does the job nicely. Clothes are dry in a day or two.