Line drying laundry

There are great reasons to dry your clothes on a rack or line. The first is you get a more then reasonable reduction on your electrical bill. Even using a indoor drying rack with a fan on it the electric bill was reduced by 15 - 20 a month.

The second is... the dryer wears your clothes out and causes them to fade like crazy. When my son was little and I just had my daughter we only had a washer. I line dried everything. One day I got asked how I could afford to keep my son in new jeans all the time... I laughed and told the guy I bought those 5 months ago and he wears them all the time... I line dry my clothes and it keeps them looking new. He was shocked at the difference between his son's clothes and mine.

Basically I refuse to pay $200 a year so I have clothes I need to replace 3 times faster.

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Originally Posted by cheekysaver

the dryer wears your clothes out and causes them to fade like crazy.

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I haven't found this to be the case, myself. (The washing machine is more likely to wear out clothes because of all the friction to get them clean.) Unless they're always in the shade, the sun will also bleach clothes, more so in summer than winter. In places like Mexico, they don't use bleach to remove stains from linens. They hang them outside in the sun.

I'm partial to 100% cotton trousers and I find they fade whether I put them in the dryer or not.

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Originally Posted by blueeyetea

I haven't found this to be the case, myself. (The washing machine is more likely to wear out clothes because of all the friction to get them clean.) Unless they're always in the shade, the sun will also bleach clothes, more so in summer than winter. In places like Mexico, they don't use bleach to remove stains from linens. They hang them outside in the sun.

I'm partial to 100% cotton trousers and I find they fade whether I put them in the dryer or not.

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LOL I have dried mine on clothes lines in the house or on racks in the house. There are way too many bugs outside for my liking! We have lower humidity here so it isn't a big deal to dry stuff indoors. (i didn't even know what a humididex was until I had a bf from ontario)

I do....can't wait for summer to get the clothes swinging in the breeze & baking in the sun....Baby's clothes will go in dryer as he's too young & it will be his 1st summer.

It's such a beautiful week....the clothesline is getting well used :-) I just estimated approximately how much we saved in hydro costs in the 22 years we have had this clothesline. I hang a couple of loads on the line a week when the weather is good and estimate that we use this clothesline for about 200 loads of laundry a year (the line holds about two loads)....so 200 loads x .25 per load in hydro savings is $50 a year ($1100 in the 22 years we have used it). Added to that, we still have our original clothes dryer because we only use it to dry towels in the winter - rest of the laundry gets hung indoors when the weather is lousy. So the clothesline has saved us much more than $1100 because we have not needed to purchase another dryer either.

I know that our Hydro One bill drops by about $20/month when I use the clothesline. My physician hates that I use the clothesline because of my allergies. I manage tho! Hydro is just way too expensive to not use a clothesline when you can. I too use a laundry rack in the winter, and most of the stuff dries overnight. Yay for clotheslines!!!!!

Oh, I just can't wait to start using our clothesline!

However, we still have about two feet of snow out in the backyard, plus more in piles where it got shovelled off the roof!

Maybe another week or so? Mind you, it snowed last night....

my clothesline is back up. I am hoping for some nice weather days. currently it is raining. alot.

We share a clothesline pole with the neighbours. Were told it needs to be replaced. DH bought new line too because ours is cracked. As long as it`s not done I won`t feel guilty about using the dryer.

I didn't use the dryer at all on the weekend and hung about 6 loads our to dry. I'm back on the "no dryer" now and can't wait to see the difference on my Hydro bill. 2 years ago I never used it and our bills were so much lower.

I have 2 dryer racks in my basement that I use for most clothes. Can't hang stuff outside as hubby and son have allergies :(

Hung all my laundry out to dry on the weekend :)

Love it, and the smell of fresh sheets off the line.

I'm hoping to do a lot of line-drying this summer!! It's my first house i've lived in that has a clothes line :)

Too much rain right now though.... it doesn't stay sunny long enough for anything to dry fully.

Nothing has been said about replacing the clothesline pole so we went ahead and put the new line up. Now I have to line dry and I hate it.