Don’t you just love the fresh smell of outside dried laundry? You bring in with it the scent of the wind and the sun. Yet how often do we have days in Britain that we hang the laundry out in splendid sunshine, only to have a shower drench just as it is almost dry?
Laundry is one of those relentless tasks you never get to the end of. Not one of my favourites. Sorting clothes and setting the machine I actually like doing, but the rest- hanging, taking down and putting away are not my favourites to say the least. And this is made even worse if your hard efforts are rained upon!
My considerations in drying clothes are environmental impact, cost and efficiency: Although we do have a dryer, it gets used once in a blue moon for emergencies and getting pet hair off some things. This is definitely an eco and cost-driven decision.
In the past years, I’ve experimented with different ways of drying clothes quickly, but in an ecologically and economically friendly way. In our old house I had a pulley dryer at the top of the stairs- good idea, clothes dried fast, but it was rather complicated to hang clothes on.
In this house I have a pull out heavy duty drying rack in our laundry area. This is pretty good: the radiator is underneath and the window behind helps air and dry quickly, especially while the heating is still on in the house. (It folds away onto the wall, so is never really in the way.)
Over the past years, since the kids arrived, we have also built up an arsenal of mobile drying racks, airers and hanging racks: Each have their pluses.
My favourites are the hanging dryers- I discovered these for hanging washable nappies, they were the best way to hang nappies by far. Now I try to hang as much as possible on these (including my denims & blouses). They are easy to move around with the sun & whip inside when as it rains. I the house they can be hung on a drying rack or a curtain pole (though this is not very attractive, I have to admit).
I usually sort clothes by the family member they belong to as I hang them, so when the contents is dry I take the whole rack up to the room, unclip there and put straight into the wardrobe. The best of hanging dryers I have found are the IKEA octopus ones, as they are very strong and seem more UV resistant than others. (Here’s a link)
In the winter I tend to use a folding 3 tier drier too. This migrates between rooms, mostly up in out loft bedroom, as that’s the warmest.
The other laundry accessory that I started using a couple of months ago is wash balls- those noisy plastic balls that go in your washing. They are supposed to help you use less washing powder and clean the clothes better. I’m not using any less washing powder and have not seen any noticeable improvement in the wash performance. I do however notice that I can get away with less fabric softener.
Do you have any good money or time saving laundry tips?
If you’ve written any posts about this “exciting” topic, please post your link in the comments
Thanks for the tip about Ikea octopus airers, will try those, every other hanging airer seems too flimsy to withstand my son kicking a football at it for long.
Is it a good enough reason to treck to Ikea I wonder?
These airers are the most robust I have found and the pegs also strong enough to hold a pair of wet denims. Being kicked by a football repeatedly… don’t know if anything would stand up to that long term, but these would definitely last longer, in my view, than most other hanging dryers. Besides, a trip to IKEA (especially if you can make it a weekday) is always fun, giving some good inspiration. 😉