To dry, or not to dry

You should invest in buying a folding drying rack. You could make one too.

The AC should pull the moisture out pretty quickly.

I hang dry all of my laundry except DH's uniforms (I hate ironing!). I, too, love the clean, fresh smell of sun-dried laundry.

Currently, my clothesline is strung between two trees, but we'll be building two T poles and setting them in the ground after we drop one of the trees (eliminating a shaded area on our future garden).

That's a good ide'er! Be an easy enough wood-working project. But it'll have to wait until I find a place to live. LOL I don't need anything more in my storage unit. LOL

I had to double check where you were from, cuz I know no Colorado Hippygirl would be talking about dropping a tree!

I got used to line drying last summer when our dryer was broken. I line dried (except when it was raining and I took them to my dads) from May-November. Now it is nothing for me to line dry. I love hanging them out and being outside doing it.

I line dry all year round. If it is below freezing I pop the wet clothing into the dryer for 5 mins. then hang really quickly while they are still warmish. There is generally always a good breeze going here, so it will dry in temps below freezing, but it will take a little longer.

I prefer crunchy towels, but could live without cardboard jeans.

Yup I like the crunchy towels but put jeans in the dryer for a few mins after hanging on the line to soften them. In the "less dry" setting. In the winter they get draped on racks near the woodstove.

Line dry as much as possible except in the winter when it rains sufficiently on a daily basis that I have to give up and throw them in the dryer to finish them off. Why pay the power company when the sun and wind will do the same job for nothing - and I find the free space of doing a mindless chore somewhat therapeutic. The cats normally come with me, the sun is warm, the birds are singing, when I've finished I wander off to have a look at the garden..... I don't mind crunchy towels either.

Cheers,
Ronnie

clothes hung out pick up pollen. Not good for allergic folks.

I was raised hanging laundry, and I guess it stuck.
I was also taught to wash windows with newspapers and vinegar, how to compost (we didnt call it compost back then) and to pick a peach or tomato if we were hungry for a snack

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I'd rather have one Chewbacca than an entire clone army.

You need to look at this from the "Glass is half full" POV, hanging clothes out takes pollen out of the air so the rest of us can breath better!

I voted 'most of the time' with this caveat: when the weather is above 50 degrees.

LOL. I try to hang my clothes as much as possible, but since I don't use scented laundry soap (allergic to perfumes) it seems that if things take too long to dry they end up smelling bad. So I use my clotheslines from whatever point in the spring its warm enough until whatever point in the fall that the temps are too low to dry the clothes within daylight hours.

I have a couple drying racks that are used indoors in the winter, but usually only for those things that are thin enough to dry quickly.

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Kris
http://thislittleplacehere.blogspot.com/

I've been line drying our clothes for a few years now. I have a screened porch and can hang them out there in just about any kind of weather. I used to bring them in the house when all but a few items in each load were dry and finish them up in the dryer for ten minutes. This knocks out the wrinkles and makes the towels nice and soft.

In March, I had a few days off from work and decided to wash up all of the linens in the linen closet. Because they took up too much space on the lines, I spent the afternoon drying them in the dryer. My dryer caught fire that day, causing no damage to the house because I was right there to be able to put it out. We haven't replaced the dryer yet and I don't really miss it, except for softening towels and eliminating wrinkles. We will be replacing it soon because my sister is giving us her old one.

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~TheMartianChick~

My latest novels:
Bystander: A Tale of the End of the World as SHE Knew It!

Christmas in Bystander & Other Village Tales

Coming Soon: A Slice of Heaven

We hang dry 99.9% of the time. It just seams like the first basic step to self sufficeny. We estimate (and I've seen other info to support this) that we save $80.00 on the electric.

A little homestead humor-We used to have a solor powered line dryer (in S. IN), now we have a wind powered line dryer (we live in WY). However the new wind powered one has the solor power back up. In the winter we have a humidity free line dryer in the basement. See in WY our humidity is very low so in the winter the dryer in the basement frequnetly has clothes dried in 6 hours.

When we lived in S. IN we had 95 days of 95% humidty with 95 degrees and the solor dryer worked great. In the winter it was drying racks all over the basement with the wood stove. We used the shower rod to dry, old chairs any thing that would get air circulating around the clothes.

Where there is a will there is a way! Best Wishes. Christine, now taking babysteps in WY.

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Gardening in the high plains of Cheyenne
www.christinemccreedy.blogspot.com

I line dry during warmer weather using an 'Amish' Clothes line on pulleys. During the winter or rainy spell we hang clothes up in the basement on hangers. I don't hang up socks, underwear or washcloths. But I do coordinate the wash so that all of these items can be dried together. I do usually fluff my clothes for a minute or two in the dryer before hanging them up. I can get 2.5 loads of wash on my line.



I think that using a dryer ends up being more work for me! I forget the clothes are in there and I end up having to re-wet them or iron them. When shirts come off the line they are unwrinkled and SMELL SO GOOD. I also consider that for every load I dry it probably costs us a minimum of $3.00 to do so.

At our last home I had a screen porch with a retractable clothesline. I miss our screen porch! It was right off the kitchen and living area - very easy access. Our cat liked it, too .

Here we have the double line in the garage from the support post to the framing for the garage door and back. We have the post and pulleys to do a much longer line from our back deck down to the back yard. Just have to get it out there.

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The three divine teachers of man: worldly calamity, bodily ailment, and unmerited enmity, and there is but through God alone a deliverance from them. Maine Farmer's Almanac

My ex was known for that, to the point that she would need to re-wash them because they smelled all moldy from sitting. When I do wash, I set a timer, most machines are 25 minutes, unless on the largest load / longest cycle. I got in that habit after living out of a hotel for work and having rude people take me clothes out of the coin washer just minutes after the clothes were done.

25 minutes give you enough time to get to the machine as it stops spinning.

I totally forgot about the pulley lines! Man, my Grandma had a set-up like that when she lived in Chicago. Just like something out of the movies, two flat apartment with clothes-lines running all over the place. People hanging out the window doing wash and talking to the neighbors. I really was born in the wrong era.

We had to buy a new washer and dryer when we moved into the farmhouse and we got super efficient front loaders. The washer only uses 15 gallons a wash and spins things so fast they dry very quickly. We have two lines from the side of the house to the well house and usually hang. We didnt think about it when we bought this place but our property is at the top of a hill (we were more concerned to be out of the flood zone) and we get a constant breeze so the drying takes very little time.

For Minelson...its not only a cost savings for us...they just smell so fresh and clean when line dried..cant beat it!

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Between that and the dust here, is why I don't hang much out. Even though living in AZ means basically living in a dryer.

I do hang some items to dry in the laundry room, though. But not a whole lot.

I use the medium heat cycle & set as short a time as I can get away with to save energy.

SirDude, I have friend in, and visit, Crystal River and Tampa, on the gulf side. They hang dry their clothes.

No, they are not going to feel as crisp as something that comes out of the dryer in a humid climate. That is true whether you are in Tampa or in Topeka. (Gulf Coast Texas is JUST as bad!) Cloth, and wood, are going to adjust to whatever humidity that they are in.

That means, even if you machine dry, your shirts are going to match the humidity of your closet after a few hours. The same is true if you line dry.

~gets out her cane and puts on her best crotchety, old granny voice~ You young whipper snappers don't know when you got it good. Why, when *I* was growing up in your state, if your clothes felt damp from the humidity, you just had to deal with it! A/C? Bah! We didn't have no A/C! And we walked uphill, BOTH ways to school, barefoot, on that heated, Florida asphalt! And we were GRATEFUL, I tell ya!

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck