The Bottom Line on Hanging Laundry

The balance between being earth friendly and frugal while being a stay at home mother to 4 sweet little girls is something that I struggle with. With this blog, I will try to document as much as possible, our path to shrinking our carbon footprint as well as our bills!

According to the WWF - Canada- Next to the refrigerator, the clothes dryer is the top energy-using appliance in the house. It cost about $100 a year to run it. Drying all your clothes naturally will save over 200 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. ( I bet it is way more than that for a family of 6!!!)

Last summer, I began hanging our clothes and sheets outside on a wire hanging rack, the rack would only hold one load and fell apart fairly quickly. While hanging clothes outside makes me feel as though I am doing my family and the Earth a great service, it also takes twice as long as throwing a load in the dryer.

A few weeks ago, I went to my local Canadian Tire to purchase an umbrella type outdoor clothes dryer. I LOVE IT! It still takes a longer to hang each item up one by one than it would to put it straight into the dryer and I am happy to spend the extra time on these things, but when you have 11 loads of laundry each and every week, that time adds up!

My goal is to hang every load possible over the summer (Winters are snowy and cold here in Southern Ontario and I don't feel that it is realistic to hang our clothes out...yet).



Things I have learned about hanging clothes outside to dry...

1. Hang you unmentionables (undies, bras, etc.) on the inner lines of the umbrella dryer. As cool as my neighbours are, I doubt they want to look out their back window and see our underwear.

2. It takes longer to do laundry this way so do not try to do a weeks worth in one day, you will only be discouraged.

3. Hang shirts upside down and fold the bottom over the line before you pin them. This will keep the shirts from having obvious "hung to dry" pointy corners in the shoulders.

4. To save time when removing the clothes, I try to group each persons clothes together in the same area, that way when you pull them off, they are all folded together.

5. Fold as you take them down. I don't know about you, but in our house, folding laundry is last on the very long list of things that we enjoy doing. If you fold each basket as you pull them off the line, the this chore doesn't seem to be quite as bad!