Summer is my favourite laundry season. Why do I have a favourite laundry season? That sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it. I love summer laundry because I can hang it all to dry outside! Line-drying clothes sounds time-consuming and old-fashioned, but it is absolutely worth it. There are a lot of benefits to drying your clothes in a fresh summer breeze, and I’m going to to share 8 of them with you today.
- It saves electricity. Dryers are massive electricity hogs, and cutting out the dryer cycle on your laundry for the warm months? That’s money in your pocket.
- No more fancy-shmancy scented dryer products! That will save you cash right off the bat, but it also saves your family from having all those nasty chemicals next to their skin all day, every day. Next time you’re in the laundry aisle at your grocery store, look at how many of the products are scented with the fresh breeze theme – it’s an awful lot! You can get that for free by hanging your laundry out to dry.
- It brightens your whites, naturally. Cloth diaper users know the benefits of “sunning” their diapers to deal with stubborn stains – this applies to your whites, too! No bleach necessary, just get those whites out in the sun and they’ll be noticeably brighter in no time.
- It’s easier on your clothes. All that lint in your dryer’s lint trap doesn’t come from lint gnomes! It comes from your clothes. Line drying is gentler on your clothes, which means they’ll last longer.
- You will iron less. Give your wet clothes a good snap before you line-dry them, and you’ll come out to nice crisp shirts and pants. Much, much fewer wrinkles.
- No static! I wear dressy pants to work almost every day, and there’s nothing I hate more than static. Nothing cuts down on static better than line drying. No lie.
- It gets you out in the sun! My kids love to help me hang the laundry and bring it in. It’s nice to soak up the sun for a few minutes on laundry day with each load I need to hang.
- It’s environmentally friendly. Not only do you save energy, but you aren’t using all kinds of chemicals that will eventually trickle down into our ecosystem. Tapping into the sun’s power is a good thing indeed.
After reading this, I’m sure some of you are still skeptical. If you don’t have space in your yard for a clothesline, or if your neighbourhood bylaws prohibit it, there are lots of alternatives. There are drying racks you can put on your balcony, if you live in a condo, or indoors. For small yards, there are retractable clotheslines, and umbrella-style ones that fold up and stash away nicely when you don’t need them. Line-drying doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Be creative, and enjoy your fresh-smelling laundry!
Some people use clotheslines because that is what is prevalent in the land. Most homes in the USA however may find it strange to use a clothesline for drying their clothing since dryers are widely used. With more awareness through articles like this, more and more people are hopping unto the clothesline bandwagon. Thank you Samantha for this cogent reasons.
I notice more and more people drying their clean laundry outside. Brings me back to when I was a wee one and my mom use to hang dry everything in the summer time. We do this sometimes too! Great thoughts here Samantha! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Samantha, thanks for sharing.
There is no reason people should not use the clotheslines to dry their clothes.
I’ve never used a dryer.
In fact, I’ve line dried my clothes all my life and will never substitute that for a dryer. Talk of the cost of managing it and the uptick in the electricity bill…