Line drying laundry in the Middle East

[ThighsRelief]

I was hanging out washing today here in London and marvelling at how quickly it dried (about 27 today).

I've been wondering about places where is regularly 50. What do you do? Hang it out at night and bring it in very early? It would be too hot to do the pegging out in the daytime surely?

I have no good reason for asking just wondered!

I wash my rugs in summer too, habibihabibi
I throw them over a strong fence, hose them wet, pour on some shampoo or liquid detergent, rinse with the hose, and then leave to dry.
I know someone who did that to a sofa!! (Except they didn't throw it over a fence, of course.)

My MIL lived in Cyprus for a while, years ago & she told me she could start hanging washing out at one end of the line & by the time she'd finished she could start bringing it back in!

I remember that from the really hot days growing up in a hot country

Wow, that would be amazing. Where I live the weather is so changeable that I regularly start pegging out washing because the sky is blue and it's sunny, and ten minutes later I haven't even finished hanging it up and I'm having to grab it off the line because I'm now standing in the pouring rain. So frustrating!

I live in the ME, and it blows my mind that most people use tumble dryers here! I hang my washing on my balcony after work, when it’s getting dark, and it’s dry in the morning. Unless the humidity is high - then it always feels slightly damp. As does everything.

When I lived in Arizona it would routinely reached 48-52C in the summer .. we used to tumble dryer! Too dusty in desert places to be line drying.

PenelopeFlintstone
I arranged a sofa cleaner to come and my housekeeper said "no need, I do it when you go on holiday "

Turns out rolls them outside and scrubs it with Jif/Cif and washes all the cushions and inners with the hose.

I read about someone (a Brit) who lived in LA. She hung out her washing and the neighbours went nuts at her lowering the tone.

Tbf, some parts of UK are sniffy about it too.

Love this thread!

In Hong Kong they used washing poles hanging out of their apartment windows. I used to think it would be fun to have a line going all the way across the street to the opposite apartment. Imagine the fights over your knickers going missing.

Many years ago I rented a flat in London and put a clothes horse on my balcony. Immediately the chairman of the RA came round to tell me to take it in, it was a little too high!

I find it takes an inordinate amount of time to dry. Doesn’t seem to correlate at all. My jeans were still wet 5 hours later the other day despite it being well over 40. Maybe the lack of wind. It wasn’t ‘a good drying day’

And yes. I see adverts on FB pages all the time - tumble dryer for sale. Why the fuck buy one in the first place?!

Am I wrong to be fascinated by this thread?

Snails was it humid too?

My relative lived in Doha she had a laundry room and housekeeper who apparently never hung washing out , My old neighbours Dd lived in vegas she said her washing would scorch and discolour she very rarely hung washing out but loved hanging it out when she visited her mum.

Noone line dried in my part of Saudi. It was sooooo dusty. Everything was tumble dried.

It seems weird to use a dryer if it's hot but the dust must be a huge factor. In Spain someone had a solana that protected washing from the sun?!

I live in the Middle East and use a tumble drier. It's too dusty outside.

Pegging your washing out in 50c won't kill you. I wouldn't get the deck chair out in the sun or go for a run, but it's manageable for living in. It's worse when it's 35c and humid to be honest.

in Australia, high 30's/low 40's and you can start to unpeg and bring washing in as soon as you've finished hanging it out! Was even able to do it with towels on occasion, and DMIL used to do it with terry nappies. DBIL is in a gated community in Florida and they're 'not allowed' to hang washing out - absolute madness.

In turkey we had a line that went from the street side wall of our flat to the wall of the buildings opposite and worked on a sort of pulley - so you stayed inside and put one item
In the line, pulled it along, put another one etc. It was a great system! My room was also really hot at the top of the house so sometimes I just flung it all on the bed and it dried!

I live in the ME, and I regularly go outside to hang my washing out when it’s close to 50 degrees, yes you get a bit sweaty, but it doesn’t kill you, drama llamas!

It dries in less than an hour (in the shade to stop my clothes fading, and I tumble dry towels to keep them soft). I never leave clothes overnight to dry, as the humidity gets worse overnight and they often end up wet in the morning. If it’s dusty, I dry them indoors in the aircon, which takes a morning/afternoon.

I am currently in England and it blows my tiny mind that the washing doesn’t dry within the hour. I literally can’t cope. I am not used to having to think so far ahead to get clothes clean and ready to wear again!

All our American friends in the ME are totally dependent on tumble dryers - they can’t imagine not using one and consider it a basic essential. None of them use clothes racks for drying. It pisses me off a bit, to be honest. There’s no need.

Where I live it is the upper 30s at the moment and I hang stuff out in the morning early or in the evening - I'm not afraid of it getting darked on but I hate to be out in the midday sun. (Or I get DS14 to hang it out as he doesn't seem to care!)

When I visited our former au-pair in southern Spain, the washing lines were on a loop between blocks of apartments, attached by a wheel block at each end, so you could peg out washing from your cooler kitchen window and pull it around and out onto the magnificent line the width of a street. Bringing it back in was ace, so quick. Things dried in about 40 minutes. Wickable fabrics would be even quicker.
It was a working class non-touristy area, I don’t suppose they’d want streets garlanded with washing in Marbella.
It was brilliant.

I love this thread for some reason. It mixes the exotic (for me) and the mundane beautifully and I find the thought of line drying clothes in a very hot climate strangely soothing

In Indonesia, it was veyr humid, so if you hung washing in the shade or inside, it didn't dry.
So it had to hang in the sun.
Everything was washed and hung out inside out, to prevent fading. But the collars still get the sun when you do that, so it was common to have a shirt with a faded collar.

Add in that in the rainy season it chucked it down with rain at about 1 pm everyday, it was impossible to do washing if you worked out of the house, as you couldn't put it out in the morning and bring it in later.

And at the ptherend of the scale, my friend was from US and tells a lovely story of his Grandma, who washed and hung out her new sheets to dry.
It was winter and they froze, really solidly frozen and then when she went outside and tried to bring them in, they shattered into lots of pieces!