You’re looking at my first use of the clothesline just outside our back door since we moved in seven months ago.
Not much, but it's a start.
The last year we lived in Seoul, we didn’t have a clothes dryer at all (most people there do not). After 12 months of hanging everything to dry, I discovered there was a lot less wear and tear on our clothes (no worries about shrinking) and I almost never had to iron anything.
I also learn that dryers are expensive (accounting for roughly 5.8 percent of residential electricity use – about 30 to 40 cents a load) and costly to the environment.
I swore when we came back to the U.S., I would only use the dryer for towels (never did get used to them being flat and scratchy) and the Kiddo’s cloth diapers (same reason). How hard could that be? We were already used to living without.
Well, the lure of the instantly available power dry has proved too difficult to resist, especially for a family that goes through about two loads of laundry a day. (Cloth diapers and wipes every other day, same for towels and cleaning rags, plus clothes for two adults and a sometimes messy preschooler.)
Not having access to the three-tier ceiling mounted drying rack that came with our last apartment also didn’t help. The only thing we have left is the small wooden drying rack I’ve had since college and the clothesline you see in the picture.
I’ve been promising myself that as soon as I got “caught up” with the laundry. (Ha!) I’d go back to kickin’ old school but it just hasn’t happened. Every time I saw an opening it usually rained. Today, I am recommitting myself. I’m going to invest in a larger indoor drying rack (like this one or this one) and keeping an eye on the forecast to know when I can use the line.
I did notice when I brought in this batch of clothes and towels that they had a nice smell and feel from drying in the fresh air. But I also remembered the biggest hassle of line drying – once you’ve used up your available hanging space, you can’t do more laundry until it’s all dry, which takes about a day. No more three loads washed and folded in a single afternoon.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s not so bad.
Update: You can find some really good tips on line drying your clothes at this post at The Greenest Dollar.
The covenants of our neighborhood state that we can not have any type of clothes line in our yard. Including back yard. It we could, I’d hang my clothes out to dry in a second. Especially the sheets!
That’s a common problem. The group Project Laundry List (linked above) does a lot of advocacy in this area, especially in towns and cities that have actual ordinances against clotheslines.