In an effort to save money and determine just how much our clothes dryer is affecting our electric bill I am going to attempt to use a clothesline for my laundry for a month.
In the past, towels and clothes turn out crispy and wrinkly. I CAN NOT iron every single item of clothing for my household of five. So help me, please!
Here are my questions for you clothesline users:
- Do I have to iron everything regardless?
- Will my clothes get faded and worn out from the sun?
- How do you avoid wrinkles?
- I have well water, but we do have a water softener (which my husband frequently forgets to buy salt for), so I am curious as to how this affects line drying.
- Do you have to add heavy fabric softeners to the wash?
- Any other pros and cons I am not thinking of?
So please, chime in on Facebook or comment below with your advice. I think I’ll be able to get my electric bill
down $100 per month by doing this but crunchy wrinkly laundry is not going to work.
Oh and I don’t own an ironing board…guess I’ll need to get one.
So what are your thoughts?
Jill says
I don’t remember our clothes being wrinkly as a kid.Most cottons like tshirts are completely forgiving. The ‘wrinkles’ stretch out as soon as you put them on. As far as an ironing board goes? I’d suggest just a heavy towel on a flat surface!
Tanya says
My mom always line dried all of our laundry, but she tossed things in the dryer for 5-10 minutes just to “fluff” it up. That’s what I typically do for my cloth diapers–I can’t stand the crunchy feel either.
Sorry I don’t have any constructive advice. :(
Charis's Mum says
I wish I had a clothesline. My dream home has one.
Growing up my mum used a clothesline, but sometimes after bringing towels or jeans in, she’d put them in the dryer for just five minutes to help them not be as stiff. And no, you definitely don’t have to iron everything.
Jenny O says
When we used prefolds, I almost always line-dried them and they were totally crispy. I either whacked them against the kitchen table (seriously!), crumpled them up, or tossed them in the dryer for a couple of minutes with a damp kitchen towel. The last was the most effective but I know you’re looking to get away from the dryer! I want to do more line-drying, too (we live in Georgia, where we’ve already had 90 degree days for pete’s sake), so I’m interested to see what other people recommend.
Zephyr Hill says
Julie, you can keep them from getting crunchy by not letting them dry completely on the line. You will still save tons of energy if you dry them on the clotheslines and then transfer to the dry for just a short air fluff.
Also, you can put vinegar in your final rinse and that will help to soften clothes as they dry.
To keep bright colors from fading, just dry them inside out! But on the flip side, sun is great for whites.
Hope this helps!
Anne
Anonymous says
At our house, we don’t even have a dryer. We live in Southern California where the weather is fine for line drying most of the year. Except when it rains or durring some days durring the wenter when the air is too moist for anything to dry and that’s when we hang everything in the house or take things to the laundromat. Now I will try to answer your questions as best I can:
•Do I have to iron everything regardless?
-You don’t have to iron everything. The only clothes that I have to iron are my husbands dress/button down shirts because they all wrinkle badly. His T-shirts also wrinkle a bit but I Just fold them and the wrinkles go away on their owne. Also some of my pants apear to need ironing after I get them off the line but folding those also works.
•Will my clothes get faded and worn out from the sun?
– It depends, but most thing will be fine. There are some clothes that actually say they will fade on the tag. None of my clothes have had a problem. I actually think a lot of clothes look more wornout from being put in the dryer. Maybe because the dryer makes all the fibers stick out making the clothes look kind of fuzzy.
•How do you avoid wrinkles?
-One thing you can do to help with wrinkles is to shake them out before you put them on the line.
•I have well water, but we do have a water softener (which my husband frequently forgets to buy salt for), so I am curious as to how this affects line drying.
– I’m not sure. I think a water softener only helps the clothes clean better with less detergent needed and doesn’t work like fabric softener. I have hard water and add water softener to my wash to help things come out clener.
•Do you have to add heavy fabric softeners to the wash?
– We don’t use fabric softener at all but we use ECOS detergent and it has a natural fabric softerner in it that might help a bit but it doesn’t make a noticeable difference to me. The only things that get stiff on the line are towls geans and diapers. If the wind is blowing a lot, things come out softer. Also the faster things dry (like on a really hot day) the stiffer they get. When It’s a colder day or when I hang things in the house they aren’t nearly as stiff. I would sugest that you use fabric softener on at least towls and you shouldn’t need to use anymore than rcommended.
•Any other pros and cons I am not thinking of?
– The main thing I don’t like about line drying is when the birds poop on things. Also I wish my diapers didn’t come out so stiff but I just have to work it out with my hands by moving them around.
The thing I love about it is that the sun takes out most stains on diapers and white clothes and if it doesn’t come out the first time it will be gone most of the time by the second wash and dry (you should still pre-treat stains on clothes though.) Also like I said before I like how the clothes don’t come out looking fuzzy.
another thing you will notice is that clothes like knits will come out looser. Things that would normally fit more snuggly after coming out of a dryer will fit looser. It doesn’t seem to be a problem though, however there are a few knit fitted diapers that I have that fit better out of the dryer. The diaper is actually smaller out of the dryer.
Well that’s it. If you have anymore questions for me I would be happy to answer. I’ve been line drying all my life so I think I know a lot about it.
Julia Campbell says
I’m not a fan of ironing.. at all.. I would say throw the wrinkly and stiff stuff in the dryer for a few mins to fluff ’em up. I have occasionally thrown a damp handtowel in with wrinkly stuff to steam the wrinkles out a bit. it would only be for a few mins to keep in line with the whole energy saving thing ;-)
Jena says
I bought a drying rack from costco.ca (much nicer than anything I could’ve found at Walmart) that I use when I can’t get things on the line. It’s still too damp here for most things to line dry outside, even on gorgeous days like this one. I have pretty soft water, I guess. My natural fiber inserts get a little crunchy sometimes, but if I throw them in the dryer with something else that I was going to dry anyway (I never line dry towels), I’m happy to do it. Things are less crunchy when I hang them outside, as I recall.
I never iron anything, unless there’s a fancy occasion. If you saw my husband’s side of the closet, you’d understand. I can usually get most wrinkles out of clothes by hanging them in the bathroom before a shower–we take hot showers, so the room gets pretty steamy. But ten minutes in the dryer with a damp towel or washcloth should do the trick, too, if you’ve got too many clothes lined up for de-wrinkling.
The worst part of line drying to me is when I bring in a spider or two. With the location of my line, though, it’s inevitable. (I’ve got one on a pulley that goes over my yard, a bit like the lines you see in city alleys in old movies. The window in the side of my porch, though, where I hang it out, is a perfect location for spiders to gathers. Lots of corners.)
Elyse says
We line dry during every season except heavy duty pollen season :) While I don’t line dry all my clothes, I do line dry my nice “grown-up” clothes.
Vinegar helps substantially when line drying to cut down on crunchiness. Add it like you would a softener. I’ve also found different fibers respond differently to line drying. Our bamboo inserts never get crunchy and neither do our synthetic fiber inserts or any clothes with a smidge of synthetic fiber. On the flip side our hemp inserts gets REALLY crunchy. Cotton is somewhere between. When they come off the line I wring them like I am wringing water out of them. It helps with the crunchiness, but doesn’t affect the wrinkliness.
Getting the wrinkles out of your wet clothes before you hang them makes a difference. If they are wrinkled when you hang them the wrinkles will stick. For nice shirts I generally dry them on a hanger to prevent wrinkles at the shoulders from the clothes pins.
We usually hang our clothes inside out to prevent fading. Also I try to bring them in as soon as they are dry to minimize time in the sun. If I am hanging clothes I’m concerned about (so not T-shirts and jeans) and the overnight forecast isn’t scary, I try to hang them towards the end of the day. They will usually be dry by sun-up. Realistically I haven’t noticed any fading unusual in our day-to-day clothes, but our gDiaper covers which get used with MUCH more frequency have faded some.
A tip I learned recently: if you want to get wrinkles out quickly and with minimal energy, you could toss the dry item(s) of concern in the dryer for 5-10min with a damp wash cloth. It will steam out the wrinkles and doesn’t use as much energy as a full load.
Keep an eye on the weather. Rain isn’t as much of a problem as wind. We can have gnarly gusts from time to time and a pair of my daughter’s pink pants have been sitting in a particularly tall holly tree since January because I didn’t check the forecast. They were brand new too :(
Pro: our diapers are practically stain free. I say practically because it is currently pollen season so we have been drying our diapers inside. I know from experience though that after a round outside they will be pristinely white again.
Momarabbit says
We line dry as much as possible, EVEN during the winter month (we live in Canada. The trick is to roughly shake out the laundry as your hanging it up. I tend to add vinegar in the rinse cycle for our towels as an alternative to fabric softener and use Ecos laundry detergent from Costco which contains coconut oil as a natural softener for all our laundry including our cloth diapers. I dislike ironing anyhting and try to snatch the clothes off the line before they dry completely if they are dress shirts or linen material and let them finish drying in the bathroom where the moist air seems to take out the wrinkles for me. As for your hard water…we lived on a farm with hard well water and no softener and still did the same as we do now.
Hopefully you find what works best for you and your family, and hope this helps :)