The wonder of line drying outside
Nothing beats fresh clean laundry, drying in the sunshine, and being blown in the wind. Your clothes will smell lovely and fresh, and you will even save some euros on your bills. So if you’re not currently line drying your clothes, you might want to try it and see if you like it.
When it is still early in the morning and all is calm and there is that crisp in the air. Then you take your laundry basket filled with your freshly washed clothes and take it outside. While you’re hanging the laundry, you can enjoy the morning birdsong and breath in the fresh air. And once you’re done, you get to go inside and enjoy a cup of tea. While you watch how the rising sun and the wind are drying your clothes, imbuing them with freshness. There is something so satisfying about seeing your clothes be blown about in the wind.
Do you need a laundry basket that looks good in your home? Then read DIY basket liner to learn about lining your baskets. That way, you can make your baskets match the rest of your decor.
Line drying clothes
You can line dry clothes in so many different ways, although all options consist of a line and pegs. We will start with the oldest of them all, the long single line outside. Whether your line is suspended between two wooden poles, or it is attached from one side of the house to your garden fence. Then there are also the more modern ones like the umbrella clothesline, which can be used in surprisingly little space. At the end of the day, they both do the same job, which is drying your clothes in the outdoor air.
But what if you only have a balcony, but you still want to line dry your clothes? Then you will want to use a clothes drying rack, they come in all shapes and sizes and will almost always be collapsible. You can use them on a balcony or inside the home. Most of them are even made big enough to hold a small to a medium load of laundry.
What I do for my laundry
I use two of these, one for my socks and undies that I line dry upstairs on the landing for easy access. That way, my family can tidy away their own things when they walk past. The other one I use for oddments. Sometimes the socks if I do two big loads at the same time. But I mainly like to use it for smaller items, like baby clothes. If some pieces that were drying on the line outside, aren’t dry by the end of the day, I also hang them on this rack. Then I can either hang them back up outside the next morning if it is necessary.
Pick your laundry day
In Ireland, there is rarely a completely dry day, so picking my day to wash the clothes can be challenging. But it is not impossible in the least, since the Irish also have a lot of wind most of the time. The agitation of the wind helps reduce the drying time even when the day is a cloudy one.
Ideally, you want to pick a rain-free day. With lots of sunshine and a nice amount of wind. But since there is no such thing as a perfect day. Just choose whichever day seems best from that week.
Looking at the week
So if you have a week where there is a precipitation chance of 40% or higher for 4 days, 2 with precipitation of around 20%, and another day with no chance of rain but it is cloudy, you would choose that day. The same goes that if all days have a chance of rain. You pick the ones with the lowest chance and see at what times the rain is predicted. Ideally, somewhere late in the evening so that you have the entire day to dry the clothes.
But what about the dryer
Until I moved to Ireland, I had never owned a dryer and always line-dried my clothes. Both my parents always line dry their clothes, when I was a little, I would help them hang the laundry. They even build me a low laundry line so that I could help. I loved hanging the laundry with them, something, always felt so special about using the pegs to keep the clothes in place on the line.
Then we moved to a new apartment where there was no room for line drying outside. Therefore we had to dry our clothes inside, which means that in the winter using a dryer is recommended. But the clothes would come out wrinkled and hot. Not to forget that most of my winter wardrobe exist out of woolen jumpers, so I still had to line dry them inside.
So not having to use a dryer now that we can line dry outside again is definitely a good thing for me. As far as I can see a dryer costs more energy, and it also gives the extra hassle of remembering which items can and cannot go into the dryer.
So I will gladly line dry my clothes any day. What about you? Do you prefer a dryer or to line dry your clothes?
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