How to Hang Laundry Like a Pro
by Rachel Tayse • June 30, 2011 • Eco-friendly, Home & Family • 9 Comments
Ok, so I am actually (and thankfully) NOT a professional laundress. No one pays me for the service of drying clothes outside, just as I collect no paycheck for growing fruits and vegetables, cooking, canning, homeschooling, or writing this here blog.
I do, however, save $1.05 in electric costs per load of laundry NOT dried in the dryer.
(Want to know how much your dryer costs per load? Look for the amps and volts on the label inside the dryer. Multiply these to get watts. Then, multiply by the average load time in hours and divide by 1000 to get kilowatt hours. Multiply that by what you pay per kwH to the electric company and you’ll have the electric cost per load. In other words:
amps x volts x drying time in hours / 1000 x cost per kwH = cost per load)
Each load of laundry in the clothes dryer also saves wear and tear on the machine and unknown environmental costs.
I believe there are aesthetic benefits to hanging out laundry. The clothes smell simply clean and fresh when they are done. The sun naturally bleaches whites. Hung properly, line-dried laundry is wrinkle-free. The few minutes it takes to hang and fold clothes is a tiny bit of an upper body workout.
And could clothes waving in the wind be more charming?
To make hanging laundry a simple addition to your routine, invest in a few quality tools and follow these techniques:
- Plastic clothespins trump wooden. We tried both and the plastic has outlasted wooden by a long shot. We have the PRESSA clothespins from IKEA; for $1.99, the price can’t be beat.
- Find a high quality clothesline. Yes, you can hang laundry on anything, but a line between two pulleys or a spinning dryer works most efficiently. In some small spaces, a retractable line would be useful. Local hardware stores may carry clotheline options. Lehmans carries a wide variety online.
- Hang shirts upside down with clips on the bottom hem at the side seams. This leaves the fewest marks.
- Hang thick items, like towels, in a single layer.
- Remove clothes as soon as they are dry. Occasionally song birds like to roost on our line and, well, no one likes bird poop on their ‘clean’ laundry.
- Get over your fear of neighbors viewing your laundry. Everyone wears underwear and what you hang on the line is at least clean!
- You can plan on a load taking 2-3 hours to dry in the summer.
Do you line dry? Share your tips and tricks below.
Added to Simple Lives Thursday 50.
Thanks for the fun post! I love line drying my laundry. We got 2 retractable lines this year & I will definitely put the Ikea clothes pins on my list
I hang my laundry, too. I have found that sheets dry in like 30 minutes, so I do the sheets first in the morning to clear the line for other things. So I do darks right after and white last. While they do attract moths, I dry the whites on the line overnight as they take the longest. Shake ‘em good when you take them down to get the moths out. You make some good points about getting over the hanging underwear. I answered a child’s friend this way when he asked about it, “What you don’t wear underwear? Oh…so you don’t wash your underwear! Oh, so you have underwear AND you wash it? So what’s the big deal?” Stopped over from Simple Lives!
I line dry cloth diapers, but not much else. I remember being very excited when we got our clothesline to dry things outside, but then so sad and disappointed to find that the clothes smell not very good after being dried outside. I’m not sure why; we don’t live in a polluted area or anything. But this post reminds me that I should try again. Do you have any cure for the stiffness that towels get on the line? (Maybe using fabric softenener in the wash or something?)
I love hanging laundry–I hang diapers, the kids’ clothes, our clothes. Sometimes towels and sheets, if I have the space. I don’t generally hang undies/boxers/t-shirts, but I will do 2-3 loads of laundry one day and just dry all those together at the end, so it’s just one load in the dryer.
Our line isn’t very big but it usually holds a whole diaper load (12-ish dipes), or a whole kid load/adult load. And by the time I’m done washing the next load, as long as it’s a nice, sunny, hot day, the first load is done drying in 2-3 hours.
We hang some stuff all winter, too, because I’m afraid to dry/shrink adult clothes. But I do dry the kids’ clothes in the winter, and the diapers. We don’t have the space in the basement to line-dry everything, and the lack of heat/sun makes it take forever, anyway. Nobody likes musty clothes, either.
Sarah, we get stiff clothes/diapers on days with little/no wind. Vinegar in the wash cycle is supposed to help some (natural fabric softener).
Oh, but I will also throw really stiff stuff into the dryer on low for 5-10 minutes, too…it helps soften things up and dewrinkle (another problem if there’s no wind).
Thanks Lindsey. I’ll try some of these ideas and see what works.
(Wow, apparently I have a lot to say about this!) I just took some laundry down and remembered what you’d said about hanging shirts. I usually hang Mike’s and my shirts inside out (assuming there are no stains), clipping at the shoulders or sometimes twice at each shoulder to take some of the weight off the pins. There’s still a funky spot once they’re dry but it’s not as funky as if I’d hung them rightside out.
I’ll definitely try your method next time!
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