winter washing & drying

[time4tea]

hello

I've just posted this on the good housekeeping page too...

any tips for getting washing dry in this weather? I seem to be washing bedlinen for DS1&2 on a daily basis, and there is a build up of pongy towels... but it is an absolute nightmare getting these big things dry. Clothes at a pinch can be done in the airing cupboard/on the radiators but with the bigger stuff it is just impossible.

What do others do? I'm not keen on using the dryer for environmental reasons. Is doing a regular service wash at a launderette (fairly thin on the ground around here nowadays) an alternative?

thanks for any tips...

I've put those drying balls in my dryer, it uses 25% less drying time and can put bigger loads in as the balls separate the clothes so they don't stick together.

I really want to live in a big Victorian house and have one of those ceiling hanging thingys - like you could have for pots and pans but are great for laundry.

busybusy

here's a link from another thread on this topic (in teh good housekeeping section) on the ceiling hanging things... www.sheilamaid.com/

hang them on the line. They dry eventually. We don't own a dryer. If outside is too cold/rainy, I drape sheets over doors.
You could also get an airer.

This is what I do:

take load out machine and hang over airer for a day
next day dry it in the drier, it takes hardly any time as you are only drying it off, some days depending on washing loads I can leave it on the airer but most of the time I can't

on dry days, hang out a washing it won't get completely dry but when you bring it in either dry it in the drier or hang it up to finish drying.

you kind of get yourself into a cycle every morning it's a load in the machine, load in the drier, load hanging up, drier load put away/in ironing basket.

I didn't have a drier until last year used to just use radiators or hanging up but it was getting too much.

i do actually dry everything on the radiators (have lots of those racks which double/triple your drying space) and have a clothes horse set up permanently on top of machine/next to boiler. requires much shifting and turning to get it all dry quickly, big things get folded and take more shifting/turning.

I dry all my stuff on the radiators - sheets/duvet covers etc I just fold up, and turn occasionaly to get them dry - or hang them over the railing on the landing upstairs. Don't own a tumble dryer.

Nappies can be a pain. At one point I had 2 in terries and the house was festooned with drug nappies. Sometimes I'd pop them in the oven with the dinner if we were running out!
Use a nappy service now cos after 4 kids I am fed up washing terries (kid number 4 is now 3 and will never potty train as she has CP)
Towels really need radiators to be on. Today I've got the sheets and towels on the line as there's a breeze. They are about 95% dry so I'll hang them over the bannisters later.

oh - I also use the big fireguard we've got - hang heavy stuff (jeans, towels etc) over than and they dry quite quickly. Very useful after we've had the fire lit - I move it back before going to bed and the remaining heat from the fire as it dies down overnight dries it even quicker.

No tumble dryer here. If it's not nice enough to hand outside we use radiators and clothes horse indoors. with heating on things dry quickly enough, but admit I hate days when it's wet out, but not cold enough to have heating on and it takes so long (days sometimes!) to get things properly dry.

drug nappies?

I never put clothes straight from the washing machine into the drier, it takes over 2 hours to dry a full load. I see the drier as a back up only. I hate the noise of it being on as well.

that should be 'drying' nappies of course. Am havinga bad spelling day or possibly bad typing.

If you got your electricity from a "green" supplier you would not need to feel guilty about using the drier occasionally.

we don't have a drier, but we do have a dehumidifier (got when we had a serious damp problem). if we're really low on nappies and the weather is rubbish we run that - not sure how much more efficient it is than a tumble drier, but even on the setting where it's only on when it senses that it's really humid, it speeds things up SO much and stops that horrible damp-too-long smell.
am going to ask for one of those power usage thingies for christmas, maybe we won't use it after that though...

Same as sweetkitty. I also have another strategy which almost eliminates ironing. Put shirts etc in drier for about 10 minutes and then hang up - indoors or outdoors depending on weather. Unless you are really picky you only have to iron the odd 100% cotton shirt or "best" dress for dd. Not sure if this is better environmentally than using iron for an hour. Certainly saves a lot of time.

Ironing? Whats that then ?
Never do any.

needmorecoffee - what a disgrace - you mean your socks and teatowels are all wrinkled?!

In previous house we used a dehumidifier to deal with the laundry, and it was fab - you could get 2 litres of water in it in under 2 hours. I think it cost under 1p an hour to run on the laundry setting on.
Now we have a conservatory like thing, and the clothes horse lives in there, which works well.

We just dry it all on clothes horses, even when we had lots of nappies to dry it didn't seem to be a particular problem. I'm suspecting we wash things less often than some people - all in a Green Cause of course , not due to slack domestic habits at all.

don't really iron either, I think we must just have low standards all round, but I prefer to think we're green rather than merely lazy and slatternly.

cmotdibbler, could you expand on this dehumidifier thing please? Never occurred to me that this could be used for laundry, thought it was just for damp cold houses.
I like the sound of 1p /hour, but would one really help to dry a single load in a reasonable time? Which one did you have?

Yup, definately green. If it passes the sniff test it gets reworn (plus I have 2 teenage boys who have to be crowbarred out of their dirty clothes. Luckily they are Home educated so no-one sees)
DD makes the most dirty clothes cos she drools and quite often the nappies leak.
I tend to wear long skirts and long t-shirts/blouses which never seem to need ironing (don't own one). Its posible poeple are staring at me aghast in the street but usually they are too busy staring at dd to notice how wrinkly my clothes are. And we never go anywhere posh that requires nice clothes.

We don't have a drier, and no outdoor space save a small balcony. We have a large airer permanently up in the bedroom, right by radiator/window (fortunately we have a big bedroom), and a smaller one over the bathtub. We manage.

I hate it if I have to wash every day. It just seems so much. However no matter how much I try and cut down dd2 is only 12 weeks and is quite sicky. So we have lots of muslins, vests and bibs to wash. Things like my jeans rarely see the wash - green rather than grubby I hope. I check everything (apart from pants and socks) to see if suitable for re-wearing. I had a small (ish) patch of baby sick on my top today - I just wiped it off. If I changed tops every time that happened it would be about 10 tops a day for me!
I change pillowcases frequently rather than wash the whole lot of bedding and have various other lazy/green strategies depending on your opinions.

I think that thin stuff took around 90 minutes on the laundry setting, nappies obv longer. DH sourced it as we had damp problems, partly caused by drying on radiators and then found how good it was for laundry- it is the Mitsubishi EJ-MV16.
Actually, if anyone is in the Worcester area I was going to Freecycle it soon, and would like to find it a new home, so its up for grabs