Why dry your clothes outside?
1. It saves many dollars on your electricity bills. To be honest, this is the number one reason why I do this. Where I live, we are charged a much higher rate per kilowatt hour during the summer months. Anything I can cut down on is helpful.
2. It prolongs the life of your clothing. Using the dryer actually breaks down the fibers in fabric much faster. I've never seen anyone use a lint trap when they hang their clothes outside. However, your clothes will fade much faster if you dry them in the sun. Sun is a natural bleach. Hang your whites in the sun!
3. The scent!!! There are few odors that can compare to the smell of clothes dried in the outside air. I can only think of two things that smell better... homemade bread fresh from the oven, and citrus blossoms.
4. Using the dryer charges your clothing with positive ions, which actually have a negative effect on your body and emotions. When your clothes dry outside, they get charged by nature with negative ions, producing a sense of well-being when you smell them and wear them. (For more information on the affect of positive and negative ions, read this article at altered-states.net. Note: From the Home Base does not endorse this website.)
5. There is something rather therapeutic about standing outside and hanging each piece of clothing. For me, it's similar to spending time working in the garden. Although it is one of my routine household chores, it takes on a whole new meaning when I'm standing outside quietly by myself, listening to the sounds around my neighborhood and hearing the birds sing and converse.
6. Folding laundry is much easier. Instead of pulling items from a tangled heap, they are already spread flat and fold in a snap!
Rather than setting up unsightly clothes lines in the backyard, I prefer stand-alone, mobile drying racks. This allows me to move my racks to avoid direct sunlight. When not in use, I fold them up and tuck them into the corner of the laundry room.
I've tried the wood drying racks, but they are flimsy and fall apart in a short amount of time. They aren't really worth they money. For a little more money (truly worth the investment), I recommend this metal collapsible drying rack:
Some people complain about the crunchiness of clothes that are dried outside. There are three ways of dealing with this:
1. Put clothes in dryer for 5 minutes before hanging them.
2. Wear them anyway. The crunchiness is gone within the first 30 minutes of wearing them.
3. I prefer to run my towels, socks, and underwear in the dryer. They come out softer, and I find hanging those items is too tedious for me.
2 comments:
good advice! I will def. be on the lookout for these come spring. Never been one to enjoy hanging out the clothes, but I am a different person now. (In Texas it was just too stinkin' hot to want to be out that long - but then again, Arizona is worse... what's wrong with you!!???) hahaha.... but they will be perfect for South Dakota!
When it is horribly hot, I load the rack up inside the house, and when it is full, I move it out to the patio. You can actually hang dry clothes outside when the temps are freezing! My mom said when she was a kid and her sister was a baby, my grandma would hang dry the cloth diapers outside. They would freeze solid. Then she would pull them off the line, frozen, and lay them on the floor near the stove. They would end up being a pile of VERY SOFT, dry diapers! Crazy how that works. I don't understand it, but somehow it really does work.
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