My work schedule and the weather doesn’t always allow it, but when possible our laundry is line dried. (Not the granny-panties or whitie-tighties but everything else!) Today I want to share how line drying clothes saves money.
How Line Drying Clothes Saves Money
Your dryer takes a lot of electricity. An ehow article from 2010 states the average family spends 44 cents to $1.32 per load of laundry dried. Considering how the cost of electric has went up in the past 4 years, I imagine we spend at least $1 per load around here.
On average I wash 5 loads of laundry a week and 2 loads of diapers. That’s at least $7 a week we are spending to run our dryer, and $364 a year. I don’t know about you, but I could use an extra $364.
Clearly Ohio isn’t all that friendly towards line drying in the winter, but if I were to line dry my clothes even half a year, the savings still add up.
The dryer eats your clothes. I know we all joke about it eating socks (I mean seriously, where DO all those missing socks go?), but every-time you clean out your dryer’s lint trap you are throwing away your clothes.
The sun bleaches your clothes. No need to buy oxi-clean or another type of whitening agent. Instead make sure your clothes are out during the hottest and sunniest part of the day.
My white bras have a nasty tendency to turn very yucky colors from sweat and the sun will turn them white again. Jason’s pillow case always turns a nasty brown and has a thick greasy feel to it that washing won’t remove. Sunning it removes the greasy feel and the stain.
Cloth diapers really benefit from line drying. The sun removes the stain and the stink. I can always tell if the soiled diaper I’m removing from my child’s bum was sun-dried. A sun-dried diaper will have a slightly wet smell, while a diaper that was last dried in the drier smells like an ammonia factory.
No dryer sheets needed. Sun-dried clothes do not create static which eliminates the need for fabric softener or dryer sheets.
The sun also kills bacteria in your clothes. Imagine bacteria on your laundry that survived the washer (lots), now the clothes go into a dryer and become very warm while still wet.
I don’t have numbers here, but if bacteria thrive in warm damp locations then I am assuming it’s really growing in dryer. By eliminating some of that bacteria, you are helping your body stay healthy.
No Gym Membership Needed. So maybe that’s a little extreme, but hanging laundry on the line is quite a work out. 🙂 Lifting baskets of heavy wet clothing, squatting to remove laundry from basket and stretching to hang it on the line. I for one have no need to visit the gym after hanging my clothes on the line!
Keeps your house cooler. Not running your dryer in the summer time can keep your laundry room 5-10 degrees cooler meaning your AC won’t need to work as hard.
“Snap” out shirts and other things you typically iron before hanging them on the line. If I line dry shirts and slacks, I don’t need to iron them. Just one more way to keep the house cool.
Little Start-up Cost.
Set up your clothes line for well under $50 and it will last you for years. I have a retractable line that runs from our shed to our house that I found on Amazon for $10. I also ran a simple cord between posts on our patio that I use for diapers.
In the winter I like my drying rack for diapers because I can sit it right outside the door on a sunny day and let the sunshine do its lovely bleaching and bacteria killing work for a couple of hours before tossing them in the dryer to thaw and finish drying. 🙂
Now that you know How Line Drying Clothes Saves Money, will you line dry more often?
Psst. If you dislike how stiff line dried clothes sometimes are, toss them in the dryer with a couple dryer balls for 5-10 minutes on fluff.
Leanne says
July 3, 2015 at 7:15 amjust one caveat on line drying— if you or your child have serious outdoor allergies, line drying can do more harm than good…. the pollen will stick to the drying clothes…. If I line dry things (especially, bed linens and towels)…. I stick it the dryer for 15 minutes to kill/eliminate pollen…. then its not a problem…
just an FYI for your readers with outdoor allergies….
Kendra says
July 3, 2015 at 11:41 amGood thoughts there for sure. I don’t have issues much with those kind of allergies so didn’t really think about that.
renee says
July 5, 2015 at 6:30 pmI have HORRIBLE Allergies, but I fight threw it to line dry…
Allison says
July 3, 2015 at 12:25 pmIf you’re hardcore into line drying it can be done in winter, but you have to watch temperature and humidity levels…it’s way too scientific for me. Instead, I set up my drying rack in front of the forced air furnace. The heat from it dries most of our clothing so even in winter our dryer is only used for bath towels and denim. It’s a wonderful thing!
Kendra says
July 3, 2015 at 9:37 pmA forced air furnace would be perfect for line drying in the winter!
Deborah says
July 3, 2015 at 2:57 pmI love the look of clothes on the clothesline! They’re so cheery! I enjoy hanging the wet laundry out, but for some reason gathering it in isn’t as fun to me. I don’t know why! Hanging it can actually feel therapeutic to me. I don’t like to hang it out if our Kansas wind is whooping! So not worth it then. It hits me in the face or gets blown down. 🙂
Kendra says
July 3, 2015 at 9:36 pmUgh, I dislike windy days myself lol as getting smacked in the face with wet towels is quite a bummer.
Emma says
July 3, 2015 at 6:20 pmOne of my favorite outside jobs is hanging laundry! I’m especially enjoying it at this house; there is a very large “umbrella-style” clothesline, and concrete all the way out there, which means I don’t have to walk on wet ground. The sun hits it early in the morning, too, so it doesn’t stay frozen late on winter mornings like the one at the last house. I love the smell of line-dried clothes. We don’t have a drier at all; when it’s wet I now have a very nifty drier in the living room; there are pictures here: https://lotsofhelpers.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/early-june-pictures/. These driers are very common in this country.
Monica says
September 16, 2015 at 1:03 pmThat’s such a neat idea! Way to use the natural processes in your whole house (plus, the laundry rack isn’t sitting on the floor for you to bump into!).
Bibi says
July 5, 2015 at 1:03 pmI line dry my clothes to save $$$, then occasionally (usually for socks and towels) I run the “fluff” cycle on my dryer after I take the clothes back off the line.
And like you already mentioned in your comment, the sun does great on the stains for cloth diapers. The sun is such a great gift from our Heavenly Father.
Monica says
September 16, 2015 at 1:06 pmWhen I lived in a condo, I hung all my cloth diaper shells on a rack in my son’s room, by the window. Even though it wasn’t outside, the sun would come in throughout the morning and bleach the stains out of the diapers! We’re now moving into a house and I’m looking forward to outdoor drying when the weather is good. The ONLY thing I don’t like about outdoor line drying is that sometimes there are spiderwebs… icky!
Kendra says
September 16, 2015 at 2:03 pmHaha! Spiderwebs yes! That is the main reason I toss everything in the dryer on fluff for a few minutes. 🙂
I have noticed that sitting the diapers by my patio door in the winter works pretty well too.