Clothes Drying

A clothesline is a classic way to dry clothing. Ours is right by the house, strung between trees, and in our climate clothes hung outside dry within an hour or two. But it is not always convenient to hang clothes outdoors -- when it is windy, smoky, raining, or snowing.

Since we live in a dry climate and have a high-efficiency washer that spins the clothes to nearly dry, my favorite trick is to install a closet rod in the laundry room and hang the damp clothes spaced apart on it on hangers. In our cabin, the laundry room is too small for a drying rack, so we replaced the closet doors with a metal rod and curtain and hang clothes in front of the closet to dry. If you don't have space to add a rod for this purpose, you can hang the hangers on doorknobs, closet door tracks, cabinet knobs, or curtain rods. This method saves at least one step because family members just move the hangers straight to closets when the clothes are dry. No starting the dryer, folding, ironing, or transferring from the folded pile to the hangers later! And in our climate the humidity added to the air by the drying clothes saves the energy we would otherwise use for a humidifier.