Hung out to dry

The winters here in Alberta can be brutal. The average temperature is around -20 degrees Celsius and there's snow on the ground for about six months. Everyone finds it hard going. A guy I was working with a year or so ago, during the winter time, started talking about taking a vacation to the UK to escape not only the cold and snow, but the monotony that can accompany the winter weather: Every day you wake up and look out of your window and everything looks exactly the same as it did the day before, and the day before that. One question he wanted answered was: how do the English do their laundry? I imagine that he had been carrying out a bit of research on properties in the UK and not many mentioned "utility room." I told him that while most homes would have a washing machine, not everyone used a tumble dryer (or indeed had one) to dry their clothes. It's not necessary when living in the UK. Although I had a tumble dryer when I lived in England, I very rarely used it. I, like most other people, dried my clothes outdoors.

I still do dry my clothes outdoors when I can. Obviously it's not possible during the winter, but once the temperature warms up, I place my clothes airer outside. While I can't say that there are no downsides to line drying, it's still the best way to dry clothes, not only from an environmental perspective, but from a clothes perspective too. Line drying is kinder to your clothes as well as to the environment.

For instance, the average tumble dryer gets pretty hot. Hot temperatures aren't kind to clothes and can damage the fibers in some items such as panties and bras, causing them to lose their shape quicker than they would if they were dried naturally.

Not only is the sun kinder to clothes, but it also comes complete with a few add-ons: It's a natural bleaching agent helping light colored items to stay that way. The sun can also help to remove stains in clothes: Place a few drops of lemon juice on a stain you want to shift and then place the item outdoors in the sun to dry. Another good thing about the sun where laundry's concerned is that it's also a natural deodorizer, so if you've got some clothes that don't smell too good, drying them in the sun should help to get rid of their odor.

Even though it's referred to as line drying, you don't really need a line to do it. Go to Ikea and pick up one of their clothes airers (or two depending on how much laundry you need to do at one time). Actually, you don't even need good weather to dry clothes naturally: Fix up a clothes airer somewhere in your house and leave the clothes to dry there - no worry about having to rush out and bring your clothes indoors when it starts to rain then.

The one drawback to line drying, for me anyway, is that I sometimes find I need to iron clothes, whereas if I've tumble dried them, having given them enough space to move freely in the dryer, I usually don't need to. But then a lot of this is personal. One man's creased shirt is another man's shirt that "looks fine to me."

Lastly, yes, a little more effort is involved in line drying (you've got to transport your clothes from machine to line and back indoors again - and have to rush to do so if it starts to rain), but we're not talking triathlon training here. And what are we using our bodies for nowadays anyway...?