Well I have digressed, the point of this post is to show how I do laundry and why I do it that way. Not too long ago, I think it was when we got our first $300 heating bill, I decided we needed to do everything possible to lower our bill. That is when line drying, without the line, entered the picture. Beyond the cost savings that comes with line drying, I also do it for two other purposes. The first is that my dryer is the absolute worst I have ever encountered. It can take up to 175 minutes to dry a load. Yes, you read that correctly - 175 minutes per load! What you should also know is this is not an old dryer - probably 4 years old. So line drying is almost just as quick. The other reason is really the most important of all. I love not using my dryer because I know I am doing something that uses less energy and as a result is better for the environment. I have two small children and a husband who likes every light and TV on at the same time, so there are few things that I completely control that can appease my need to lessen our family's footprint on our planet - but line drying is one. The first time I tried line drying our electric bill dropped by about $20. Considering that we didn't change anything else in that period of time, I would say that is a significant difference. Wow, I hadn't really thought of it this way, but that is $720 a year!!!!
There is also another benefit of line drying that didn't even weight into my decision but is an added bonus - it is actually better for your clothes and will allow them to last longer. When you clean out your lint collector in your dryer what you are actually taking out is material your clothes have lost. This is a result of the heat and the clothes rubbing together. When you omit this part (the drying) then your clothes end up lasting much longer and saving you more money in the long run.
So without anymore rambling here is how I do it:
I have two drying racks that I bought at Target for about $9. They work great for the kids clothes & undergarments because there isn't a great deal of space from one rack to the next. If you hang adults clothes, especially a tall man's then they don't work as well. The bigger the clothes the more space it takes up and the more difficult it is to get the items dry. I do this in our basement where for the most part the laundry is out of the way, but if you don't have a basement I'm sure you can find some place else to use these. The drying racks really are not that big, so you don't need a lot of space.
The next place I dry clothes is in our spare bedroom. Fortunately for us right now, our two children share a room, which leaves me an extra room to dry clothes in. On top of that we are truly very lucky to have a lot of extra storage space and each of the upstairs bedrooms have two closets. So here are the two closets...
And here are the two closets full of drying clothes (Ignore the mess:)....
The final place where I usually put laundry is in the kid's upstairs bathroom. Usually no one goes up there so it isn't really an issue. Even if it were used regularly I wouldn't say it would be a problem, it just isn't as aesthetically pleasing or orderly (I had to give up on that a long time ago) as you may want it to be.
I try to get all the laundry done in a 36 hour period, so I traditionally get three loads done on the first day and let them dry over night and put up the next two early the next day so they are done and put up by that night. Honestly, this process of line drying has made laundry a tiny bit more enjoyable. "How?" you ask. Well, since I have started to line dry I actually feel like I am doing my family some good in saving us money and I also feel like I am doing less damage to the planet than I once was. So, for those two reasons I get at least a tiny bit of enjoyment out of this mindless, tedious, never ending task.
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