Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I'm fairly robust versus cold, but I often find myself heating my place just to get clothes dry. It's an awful lot of energy for something so simple. Obviously in the summer I stick my clothes out to dry on the line with good ol' fashioned solar power, but with winter coming I'm looking for some alternative strategies.

Edit: Should add this is for UK. It gets cold and wet here.

I have never tried it but what if you put them in a closet with some desiccant (after wringing them of course). Perhaps put a towel down underneath.

Or maybe you could use a dehumidifier and a fan.

This might be pretty obvious but clothes dry a lot faster if there is plenty of air around them. I hang bulkier items like sweaters and trousers on clothes hangers on curtain rods around the house. I have also several folding racks to hang the laundry with lots of space between single items. This is of course dependent on having enough space to put them up. My washing machine spins with 1200 revolutions in a minute, so the stuff comes out pretty dry already. Loads with bulkier items often get a second spinning cycle to get as much water out as possible. We life very old-fashioned without central heating and are 3 people so I can not hang all of our clothes in the heated rooms. The above mentioned things work well for me.

The three primary factors are humidity, airflow, and temperature. Larger rooms would tend to have higher airflow so if you have a place to hang them there that would be ideal. The pieces should have some space in between. Humidity is probably the most challenging to control for. Living in Brazil would make this more difficult than Canada for instance.

Maybe a desk fan?

I use a clothesline indoors. Wrap one end around a doorknob, run the line up to the top door hinge pin, then continue point-to-point around the space, using other door hinge pins or whatever. The other end of the line is wrapped around another doorknob. This spreads out the clothes a lot more than using a drying rack. As daylen said, airflow is important. Without the heat on, drying time will be about 9 hours. Quick try clothes are done the quickest (2 hours); jeans take the longest. An open window and a properly-positioned fan will knock a couple hours off the drying time.

Clothes will dry indoors In cold temperatures if the temp is above freezing and the location is low in humidity. I’ve dried clothes successfully in a cold basement.

Chris wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:11 am

I use a clothesline indoors. Wrap one end around a doorknob, run the line up to the top door hinge pin, then continue point-to-point around the space, using other door hinge pins or whatever. The other end of the line is wrapped around another doorknob. This spreads out the clothes a lot more than using a drying rack. As daylen said, airflow is important. Without the heat on, drying time will be about 9 hours. Quick try clothes are done the quickest (2 hours); jeans take the longest. An open window and a properly-positioned fan will knock a couple hours off the drying time.

I used to do the same when I was single. I didn’t want to buy a clothes rack for £25 so bought a clothes line for £1 instead. Doorknobs work but picture framing hooks from wall to wall across a medium size room works better.

I had an open floor plan and cooked with the oven a lot so when I was done cooking I left the oven open to let the residual heat out. Also would shower with the bathroom door open (again, I lived alone so YMMV) to spread heat out as well. Worked pretty well in a 1 bed flat in London, even in the winter. I never turned the heat on unless I had company and was endeavouring to make it more comfortable for others.

Depending on how your house/flat is set up this may work for you?

In the summer, on an outdoor umbrella rack. This one: https://www.facebook.com/earlyretirementextreme

In the winter, on a paracord strung between a shelf unit and a hook in the joist in the basement. It takes about 48 hrs to dry at 56F/50% humidity(*).

To speed things up or in case of rain, clothes are moved inside to something like this https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Fol ... 00H7P1GPO/ (definitely didn't pay that much!---at that price DIY makes sense. At our price, DIY didn't) and something like this https://www.amazon.com/Lasko-inch-Power ... 075NL44TK/ (electrician left it behind for us) is pointed at the racks (we have two in various states of disrepair. For example, did you know that an AAA battery can substitute for a broken dowel? )

(*) I miss CA summers (95F/3%) where clothes would dry completely in about 15 mins.

Gravy Train wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 25, 2019 10:00 am

If you run out of space to hang things, I used to lay this down on the bed in my tiny Beijing apartment to put wet clothes on: https://www.amazon.com/Qbedding-Cooling ... 89&sr=8-34

That's interesting. I have racks to put clothes on, but that looks like a good way to recover some floor space.

Line drying indoors across window sills on one of these
https://www.flickr.com/photos/185188551 ... ed-public/

One basic aspect is getting out as much of the washing water as possible before attempting to dry further. While RVing this summer, we used a ~$100 washing machine that has a wash side and a spin side (takes 1/2 capacity of the wash side). It quickly extracts an impressive amount of the moisture. I've seen the same at gyms for swimsuits (but made out of metal and I assume costing a lot more). I'd expect most washers to do a good job on this step but something to consider if your washer is not.

SavingWithBabies wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 27, 2019 9:39 am

I've seen the same at gyms for swimsuits (but made out of metal and I assume costing a lot more). I'd expect most washers to do a good job on this step but something to consider if your washer is not.

When I was a kid we used to have a separate "spinner" (is this a word?!). It was a smallish tube, terribly loud when running but very effective.
One of my aunts tried to get rid of hers recently, perhaps there are countless machines languishing in people's cellars. It would probably not be hard to get one for free.

We just line dry in a small room and we use a box fan to circulate air.

In the dryer.

Drying clothes inside is very bad for air quality. Increases humidity and mould etc. Better if you cant dry outside to use a dryer ventilated to the exterior. I think its not worth scrimping on health to save a few bucks

Same here. Line-/rack-drying a load or two of laundry is great when your air humidity is down to 20%. So is slow cooking or taking a hot bath:)

I often hang clothes to dry for health reasons in my bedroom to get humidity up. It is not exactly sexy, though ;)

I have a few methods that I've used over the years.

Method 1 (Dry rack): I was gifted this by the in-laws and it works very well for small items like socks and underwear. I usually open this near my sun facing window in my apartment. Within a few hours everything is dry. Dry rack gets folded up and tucked away behind the headboard.

Method 2 (Extendable shower curtain rod): So I have a habit of scavenging and salvaging items in my surrounding neighborhood. I once found a new extendable shower curtain rod and now use it to hang-dry larger items of clothing like shirts, pants and shorts. The trick is to find a spot where the curtain rod will fit without falling off the wall. Wet clothing goes on hangers and the clothes get hung on the curtain rod. Extra points if you can get airflow via two open windows on opposite ends of the clothes. A small fan works well too.

Method 3 (Clothes dryer): This is my least favorable method but I have a trick to save some money. My apartment complex has two laundry rooms that are regularly used throughout the day. The machines use both a phone app and quarters to operate. Some tenants will finish their laundry but leave a few minutes remaining on the dryer. The timer wont run unless the machine is running. As long as there is at least 1 minute remaining on the timer I can throw my clothes in the dryer, add a couple quarters and continue the drying cycle. This will only cost me ~50 cents as opposed to $1.50. Ill only use this method if I need to dry large items like bed sheets, blankets or towels.

Clothesline in cold basement.

Used to have a single line I would hang across an apartment and the items that wouldnt fit would get hung on doorknobs, chairs, whatever.

my studio has a mould problem so i run a dehumidifier anyway, I dry my clothes on a folding rack inside and the dehumidifier whisks away the moisture. this makes it possible for the clothes to dry even in winter, which is very cold and clammy/wet here (albeit not that cold compared to, say, midwest US or canada).