Learn to dry clothes without a dryer
by Diane D.
Hinged Wooden Clothes Pins - they save money and the planet!
My favorite "green" product is the simple clothes pin. Every weekend (unless it's raining), I wash my laundry in the washer and then head out to the back yard. There I have plain cotton rope tied to the fence and a couple of trees. I grab my basket of clothes pins and spend quiet time hanging my family's clothes out to dry. There is something so satisfying about the whole process. It's so relaxing I find that it's meditative.
A couple of times during the day, I might go out and check the progress, sometimes moving the jeans and other heavier items around to keep them in the sun.
At the end of the day (or sometimes 2 days, if it's very cloudy or cool), I gather in the dry clothes and return the clothes pins to their basket, where they will wait patiently until the next weekend.
Here in the Bay Area, I can dry outside for about 3/4 of the year. During the rainy season, I eye my dripping clotheslines wistfully, looking forward to the spring when I'll be able to use my clothes pins again.
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The downside to wooden clothespins...
...they can get moldy and rot if you leave them out all winter. While not pretty, they are still useful. Drying your clothes can save you a lot of money - even more if you go to a laundromat to wash & dry your clothes. I can run a load of clothes at night before I go to bed and then hang them up before work - they're all dry and sweet when I get home. Unless the plum tree is attracting birds but I can work around that. :)
I try to dry as much indoors as I can during the winter -- I'll half-dry sheets and blankets and hang them over the door; clothing will go on hangers over the shower curtain bar.
Terrapass has some numbers on how much you save by line drying clothes:
Cost/load (electric): $ .35
CO2/load (electric): 5.6 lbs.
Loads/year for a family: 365
Cost of a clothes horse: $ 5-10
$ saving/year (1/2 loads air dried): $63.88
lbs CO2 saved/year (1/2 loads air dried): 1016 lbs.
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/how-to-finance-2
Jenn's keywords: clothes, line drying, clothes drying, energy conservation
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