I have a confession to make. We had an electric clothes dryer! The shame. It used to use to be rated at 1800 watts on the warm setting and 2200 watts on the hot setting. Such a guzzler of electricity, and it was the cause of some very high winter electricity bills.
The good news is that it broke over a year ago when the element burnt out, and I only took it off the wall a few weeks ago and took it to the metal recyclers.
The even better news is that we did not replace it with another electric clothes dryer, even though our clothes drying needs have not changed. We still need to dry clothes when it is raining, or cold in winter, or humid in summer.
The best news of all is that we have learnt a few tricks and tips that we can now share with you, now that we have managed to go dryer free for over a year. Here they are.
- Don’t replace the broken dryer. Billions of people on the planet survive without this energy wasting device. You will save a stack of money by avoiding the purchase, have lower electricity bills, and a much lower carbon footprint. Even if you use GreenPower, you are still saving loads of money.
- Look for a good airer/clothes rack/horse that holds at least one load of washing. We bought two for those big washing days.
- Use solar passive in winter to dry your clothes indoors. We put the airers into the front room which we close off and it gets nice and toasty in there. It drys the clothes in a day or so and you don’t have to brave the elements to hang them out.
- If you use a heater of some sort in the winter evenings, then place the clothes airer a safe distance away from the heat source. Your clothes will be dry by morning.
- Plan ahead. If you know the kids need their school uniforms for Monday, then do a quick load on eco-mode (don’t forget the soap nuts) and load up the airer on Friday night. They will be dry by Sunday.
- String up some cord beneath an under cover outdoors area, preferably one that gets a good breeze. Your laundry will be dry in a day, even when it is wet outside. If it is sunny, then use the hills hoist if you have one.
- Install a retractable clothes line in your laundry using the space that used to be taken up by the dryer!
- Celebrate your successful transition from clothes dryer addict to green, clean, laundry machine.
Here are some pictures of our laundry drying techniques. Simple yet effective.
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| Clothes Airer |
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| Undercover clothes line |
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| Retractable indoor clothes line (in) |
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| Retractable indoor clothes line (out) |
I give most of the credit to Kim, who could have just told me to go and buy a new one when our old dryer broke, but it was her idea to try life without the electric dryer, so I did not suggest otherwise. Well done to her for going against the grain of the normal societal trend.
Dry clothes the natural way. It is the only way to go. Our electricity bill has never been so low in winter, and our clothes last longer and don’t have that static cling you get from using a dryer.
Nice one Kim! Have any of you ditched the dryer?
My dryer recently broke through the middle of this last winter and we won’t be replacing ours either. We have been drying our clothes on an airer and hanging rail in front of our gas heater, and they are always dry by the next day! With a family of 5, that’s a lot of washing and we manage just fine! Keep up the great work Gav,love reading your posts!
We have been without a dryer for about three years now, and have a clothes line under the eaves. It works great – even in the wet season!
we haven’t plugged in our drier since moving house 2 years ago. Having a retractable clothes line on the verandah has been a great help, we can fit 3 loads of washing out there and leave it there for days. I’m wondering now about uses for driers that have no element but still work….
yeah nah, dont have a dryer, had one 20 years ago when i lived on the chathams and the wind was too strong to hang washing on the line. we hang alot on coathangers onto a wire running thru our ceiling beams above our lady kitchener firebox for winter and under a roof on the deck or out on the clothes line. undies and socks will dry overnight in the cylinder cupboard.
ive cut down on washing so much, re using towels and sniff testing outerwear to see if they actually do need washing or just hanging up to air.
I’m happy to say I’ve never owned a dryer, although an apartment I lived in a few years ago had one built in (as did every apartment in the brand new building: there was no clothesline and drying clothes on balconies and courtyards was prohibited!). The only thing I miss is that the filter would get rid of cat hair which instead gets on all our clothes! A clothesline and closehorse does the trick.
Hi Gavin,
Great reading your pages. You might want to check out soda can solar heaters in your search engine.It’s a great way to use old cans and boost the interior temperature of the house before the heating adds to it. With a bit of ingenuity you can direct the heat only into the laundry and turn your laundry into a drying room and a nice place to hang out.
jo
I am pleased to hear you didn’t replace it. As you now know it is easy to live without one. We have a clothes line in the shed. Being made of tin it even gets a little warm in winter.
I once read about a drying system that used the heat generated from the back of the fridge.
We ditched the dryer when we moved into our tiny house. We use our clothesline as long as we can and our wooden rack throughout the winter. We have a pellet stove and the clothes dry in several hours, adding moisture to the house. One you use a rack you’ll never go back!
Hi – like a lot of cash strapped Brits, I’ve never owned one. Electricity is just too expensive. I have four clothes airers and I too, use passive solar. I’m south facing and get more warmth than average. I do well considering that it rains more than it doesn’t. In the winter, I dry clothes in the front room in the heat of the wood stove and by morning they are dry. I manage to get clothes out in the wind to get the worst of the wet off. I also wear clothes until they are dirty, towels are hung up to dry indoors and used again and again, we wear our clothes several times too in the winter. It’s so cold most of the time that we don’t sweat. even socks can be worn again.
Great post – I haven’t used a dryer for years and do all that you have suggested – it is easy peasy after a while. I do have two Mrs Pegg lines which hold up to two loads of washing each and they are all Australian!
http://www.mrspeggshandyline.com.au/
Glenda
Like the Frugal Queen and most Brits, we’ve never really owned one (we inherited a “washer dryer” for a couple of years but the dryer was so pathetic that we only used it once and just used it as a washer after that).
Even when we were in a tiny north facing house (in the UK = bad) and had no sun at all on the house or garden, we still managed to line dry all of our clothes either in the house or garden. We had a ceiling rack to get the bulk of the washing up out of the way, and a couple of smaller portable airers so they could be used wherever was warmest. I wrote up my own tips about line drying in winter last year.
Next spring I’ve decided I’m going to “treat” myself to a new rotary airer for outside – the fact I’m seeing it in as “treat” at all shows I’m possibly a little too into line drying! 😉
I have never owned dryer and was amazed that , in America where my son lives, there are neighbourhood rules that do not allow for outdoor clothes lines! It does snow in the winter and get horribly hot and humid in the summer which would make outdoor drying tricky at times..but rules to stop you from trying…that is ridiculous. On the other hand the dryer they have is huge, fast and convenient…not sure on the electrical usage though.
I might be the first one here to admit it, but we do have a dryer! In the warmer month it only gets used for towels, while everything else gets hung up outside. In the cooler month it gets used for towels and sheets, since I do not have enough room to hang them up indoors to dry.
Getting around in blog-land I too was amazed to see places where a clothes dryer was seen as just ‘standard issue’ in a house.
Of my 17 years running my own home (I’m 33 now) I’ve only once had a dryer – we were given a secondhand dryer, which lasted about 6mths. That’s it and I don’t miss it.
Other than brief fling, with 6 of us in the house (minimum) and having used terries/modern cloth/resuable nappies for four children, I’ve not needed a dryer either.
Your list pretty much sums up what we do, Gavin 🙂
We also spend time out bush, on the station with my Nanna (a boiler to light for hot water)… and it really brings back what’s important – refocus, if you like.
Out of interest, did the metal recyclers pay you anything for it, or just the ‘good’ of repurposing the materials?
I dont own a clothes dryer (or a dishwasher) and have always dried clothes outside when the weather is fine and under the veranda or inside on clothes racks when the weather is inclement. Where we live we have 300 days of sunshine a year so not really a problem to get clothes dry…
Also in UK: I’ve never had one, unless you count when I lived in one room and had to go to the launderette. I have two airers like yours, one bigger than the other. The smaller one easily goes from the spare room to the back door (we live on the ground floor)fully loaded so is easy to get in and out when the weather is dodgy. We also have an over bath airer and three radiator racks. I start bigger things off over two bars of the bigger airers, then move almost dry things to the radiators as more washing is done. As we have a cold, slightly damp flat, we have a dehumidifier, which I plug in near the racks and it dries things more quickly. It takes far less electricity than a dryer.
Hi Gav
We never brought ours back from New Zealand nearly 6 years ago and we don’t miss it at all. We hardly ever used it there as power was so expensive.
Our clothes line in W.A. Is on the ocean side of the house so we get the sea breeze in the afternoon which is great. In winter we just use airers and put these in the rooms that we are heating. We also find that some rooms dry better than others. Our bathroom is a great room to get school uniforms dry over night.
Hazel’s comment reminded me of this clip I thought you might like.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/308751/may-05-2010/the-enemy-within—backyard-clothesline
Gav – we don’t have a dryer NOR a washer – bahahaha! but we plan on getting a washer soon but will still line-dry all four seasons of the year. and we love hand-washing our clothes out in the backyard – have a look:
http://framboisemanor.blogspot.com/2011/09/laundry-101-at-framboise-manor.html
we plan to use the washer during the winter months as it will be too cold on our hands to wash in the winter. but we will hand-wash the rest of the year!
thanks for all of the great tips!
We’ve never had one in our married life (7 years), and don’t plan to get one. We were offered a second hand one for free a while ago, but decided against it. We’ve had 2 children in cloth nappies full time, and in winter, I just rotated them on the clothes airer in front of the heater. I have 2 airers outside under the back porch as well. I have a gas heater on most of the day in winter, so I consider that to do jobs- dry the clothes and warm the lounge room. No ducted heating here. I can still get bed sheets dry outside in winter, but it can take a few days, especially if it’s raining!
Well, I am a happy electric dryer owner. So, when the wash is done, I toss it in the dryer for maybe 5-8 minutes. Then, I check it. Some thin items are dry and most items have shed their wrinkles. I put clothes on hangers and hang them on a door frame or on the shower rod. Also, towels and jeans hang on the rod. The rest goes on a wooden rack set up in the tub. If items are still wrinkly, I run them a few more minutes and I just go ahead and finish sheets in the dryer – they only take about 12 minutes total.
Also, I re-use bath towels several times and re-wear some clothing several times, especially in the winter. So, this is not too extravagant on electric. And, because I used the dryer to remove wrinkles, no need for ironing. And, because I have an electric dryer, I vent it indoors about 7 months of the year, adding humidity and conserving heat. Just remove the vent from the wall and attach an old pair of panyhose to the end. Do not attempt this with a gas dryer.
So there it is. I have a bunch of energy saving tricks to use throughout the house, but not ready to give up the dryer.
brenda from arkansas
I also luv my clothes dryer, only use it when it rains lots and for my towels. I’ve never been able to figure out how to get fluffy soft towels from my front load washer. I always had soft fluffy towels out of my old top loader. I have tried every suggestion, but nothing worked.
Now I put the towels in the dryer for 35 mins and finish on the out side line or if wet, on a clothes airer in our front room.
Hubby got the dryer 2nd hand really cheaply because it has a ‘fault’ in that the door pops open when things are dry, even if there is more time left on the dial. I consider this a bonus not a fault. Clothes don’t over dry and I’m not paying for power unnecesarily.
We still have a clothes dryer but rarely use it. The only time we use it is when we get a lot of rain in the summer. Because of the high hummidity+rain, clothes tend not to dry very well under the veranda and they smell a bit. So the dryer gets used, grudgingly.
In Tas during the winter, even a full day of line drying won’t get them completely dry so we are the masters of clothes drying I reckon. We hang a lot of things up toward the ceiling as there is a lot of heat up there and things dry very quickly. I made my hot water cylinder into a cupboard with a door and installed racks above it where smalls can dry quickly. I also placed it adjacent to my linen cupboard and drilled holes through so that it airs the whole way through.
*gasp* I don’t iron either lol
actually when I was sewing and had to press some seams before sewing them (something I don’t ‘do’ either), my youngest asked me (when I got the iron out) – ‘Mummy… what’s that?’ LOL
Glad you didn’t renew the drier. Driers shrink clothes, and and shorten their life expectancy. Not to mention all the cash you’ll save 🙂
I’ve found that using a piece of chain is better than a piece of string for an outdoor clothesline. Use metal coat hangers to hang the clothes (socks etc can be pegged) and put the hangers through the chain links. The chain is stronger than your average line, holds more clothes as the hangers are placed sideways, the hangers don’t slip into one another, and you can install the whole thing permanently up at roof height where it won’t hit you in the neck on a dark night!