After a long break from my Thursday Thrifty Tip postings, I'm back in the swing of things...but a day late. (Go figure.) But, I'm sure you won't mind especially after what I have to say.Sipping my daily dose of tea this morning, I was struck by a post at Treehugger about a new movement encouraging people to dry clothes instead of using the dryer. Trust me, I'm all for saving a few cents on hanging my clothes as well as reducing my carbon footprints, so no problems here. But what got me really stewing is the figure that by 2010 over 50 million household in the US will be banned from hanging their clothes outside. What in the world? Banning people from drying their clothes outside due to "loss in property value" and "prudenceness"...good golly. Really, are people THAT cool?
According to our utility company, an average household does about seven loads of laundry a week costing approximately $.37 per load to dry their clothes in the dryer. We recently purchased a retractable clothesline for the backyard in an effort to start hanging our clothes out more. Yes, it does take extra time and weather conditions don't always make it practical. (Trust me I know, after years of living in the Midwest!) However, our family has committed to hanging at least one load of laundry on the outside clothesline or inside drying rack for the next year. This will be approximately $19.24 saved over the year and not to mention the value saved in reducing our carbon footprints.
I admit, this isn't crazy savings, but I think we are preserving a time-old practice of utilizing the sun and wind to dry our clothes inside of utilizing electricity. But, most of all we are making a statement of "drying" freedom to air our laundry...and trust me, our clothes will be blowing in the breeze outside the Little Blue Bungalow.
From inside the little blue bungalow,
Katie Jean
3 comments:
I love clothes dried on a clothes line... they always smell so good! We always dry our sheets this way, no matter what.
The sun is also great for bleaching those whites!
One of the things I was looking forward to when we owned our home was being able to hang clothes outside to dry. However, the HOA did not allow clothes lines! I was shocked - it's not like it was permanently making our house aesthetically DISpleasing - c'mon, the underwear will ONLY be out for an hour or less!
I'm not sure if you are able to notice this as much living in a house, but in a condo or apartment setting, I can always tell when people are doing laundry because of the smell of extremely fragrant detergents and dryer sheets. I almost feel as though there needs to be a ban on these kinds of items because, personally, I find the smell disgusting, and logically because I can only assume that it's somehow polluting the air. Needless to say, I use an unscented and biodegradeable detergent.
I found that when I dried Prestons cloth diapers outside it also bleached the stains right out, which I liked.
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