Line Dry your Clothes

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★

Clothes dryers use quite a bit of energy to operate! Drying your clothes on a line saves all of this energy - about 6% of typical residential energy use. By using hanging your clothes out to dry, you reduce your use of gas or electric resources. You may even be able to eliminate your need for a clothes dryer! A study by Cambridge University's Institute of Manufacturing found that 60% of the energy associated with a piece of clothing is spent in washing and drying it.

Money Saved: ★★★★☆

You'll be saving on your dryer energy budget, and during warm summer months you actually save twice as much! This is because by drying clothes outdoors your air conditioner doesn't have to remove all that extra heat from your house. And if you live in a dry climate, you can dry your clothes on inside racks by a fan and actually cool (by evaporative cooling) the house in the summer! Triple energy savings! The average money savings for a household that line dries is more than $100 a year. Also, your clothes will last longer. Where do you think lint comes from? If you do completely without a tumble dryer, think of the extra money you saved on the appliance! You'll spend a very small amount on line or racks for drying, and maybe clothes clips if the wind is blowing them off your line. By comparison, the average home dryer uses around $1500 of electricity that you could save during it's 18 years of life

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★☆☆

Drying your clothes on a line takes a little more time and effort than in a dryer, but the money you save makes it worthwhile. And clothes that are dried outside smell fresher and feel soft. Whites are bleached by the sun, and sunlight also disinfects. Another lifestyle benefit: dryer fires account for about 15,600 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 400 injuries annually. In the winter, you can make your house more comfortable by rack drying your clothes to help raise the indoor humidity level when your furnace is making it too dry. And if you don't even own a tumble dryer, think of that extra space in your home you can use! And you won't lose as many buttons! Sheets can be especially nice when freshly off an outdoor line. If you have enough space on your lines, you can line dry quite a few more clothes at once than a dryer can handle - actually saving you time if you're doing lots of laundry!

What We're Doing

The photo shows a self-retracting clothesline that we use inside the house when it's too wet outside to dry clothes. We also have some collapsing wood racks that are easy to set up for indoor drying. Shannon sets them up under our ceiling fans for faster drying. When drying outside, we just use a line tied between posts. If you put up your own line outside, use a cotton line or one that is made for clothes drying rather than a synthetic line like nylon or polypropylene. Plastic (synthetic) rope materials will degrade and crumble if left out in the sun for long periods. We do still have a small electric clothes dryer, but it sees very infrequent use.

Tips

1. Turn clothes inside-out when drying outside on a sunny day, to reduce fading. Also hang the darker clothes toward the middle where they'll be more shaded. On summer days in particular, take the clothes in promptly when they're dry to prevent fading.

2. On cold days, hang clothes out early so they catch the midday warmth.

A Little Humor

Teacher: What is the axis of the earth?

Student: The axis of the earth is an imaginary line which passes from one pole to the other, and on which the earth revolves.

Teacher: Very good. Now, could you hang clothes on that line?

Student: Yes, Sir.

Teacher: Indeed, and what sort of clothes?

Student: Imaginary clothes, Sir.