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We had dryers in Europe as soon as they came out. Nothing like wet clothes all over the house in winter. No fires so far. Keep the lint trap and hose clean.
I do air dry a lot. On hangers and on a chain under a huge pergola (high enough to avoid accidental decapitation) - outer wear and sheets. My bloomers are nobody's business! Towels go into the dryer. Try hanging sheets on a line in everyday Oklahoma weather They will end up three houses down the road depending wind direction and bearing a soft red tinge which will not wash out. You can dye cotton Ok red on a permanent basis.
For winter we have wood dowels (stained to match door frames) in the door frames of two unused rooms and the connecting jack/Jill; barely low enough to get a heavy duty plastik hanger over it. Good airflow and it will dry in no time.
Sorry, but wearing clothes which can be machine washed over does not appeal to me.
and then there is the HOA do you have one ? you had better check if they allow you to have a clothes line folding or not . A lot of the HOAs prohibit clothes lines . I hate clothes on a clothes line cause we have neighbors who like to burn their trash and on a windy day that smoke ends up in your clothes and all the dust in the air lands on your clothes . you want to wear dust ? dirt ? smoke ? no thank you . I will continue to have a clothes dryer .
I think you should try going without. See for yourself if you want one, before buying another one.
We also keep a wash bucket and plunger standing by. Since moving to Maine many times we have gone multiple days without grid power. After a few days without power as laundry piles up I want to go ahead and get through the laundry. The same goes for our composting toilet.
If it's just one or two people, you don't need a dryer. I wash stuff and hang it on wooden drying racks. For knit tops, I hang them to dry on coat hangers. It's great in winter because if you live in the north, the inside air is bone dry and the damp clothes will add moisture to the air. It's great in summer because you can put the racks out on the deck and those sheets and towels will smell beautiful and get deodorized and really, really clean by the sunlight.
I love the feel and smell of clean, crisp air dried sheets. They're not supposed to be mushy soft, supposed to be crisp. Towels, I like the feel of the massage I get with rough towels. I hate it when they have to go into the dryer on a rainy summer day and come out soft mushy.
I used to have one of those outdoor clothes dryer things that was a pole-like parachute thing with clotheslines around it. That was wonderful. But that house and big yard are gone so I make do with the drying racks. They sell sturdy white metal drying racks too--some can go over a door and some are the regular fold up types.
They can catch fire. The warnings about not running them unattended are no joke. My sister's caught on fire and her pets died in that fire. If mine is on when I am ready to leave I turn it off. Same for the washer and the dishwasher due to flooding risk.
That's horrible. I know that there can be a fire, I've just never known anyone it happened to.
I don't leave anything running (except the refrigerator and heat) when I leave the house.
That's horrible. I know that there can be a fire, I've just never known anyone it happened to.
I don't leave anything running (except the refrigerator and heat) when I leave the house.
The first time that I experienced a fire onboard a sub was a laundry fire. A friend was minding the laundry, I went down to see how he was doing, and I opened the dryer. As I reached in to pull out the clothes they burst into flames. I dropped them, turned around and grabbed a CO2 extinguisher. I gave one short squirt of CO2 and as I backed away, our XO came in and pushed me aside with a charged firehose.
Thankfully nobody died, but that was the fire most imprinted in my mind.
Most dryer fires are caused by improper dryer maintenance, often due to lint that gets past the lint filter into the dryer or failure to properly maintain the ducts. I had a dryer in the UK that didn't actually vent at all, and I think that could easily have caught fire as the first time I used it a pair of PJs had parts that melted.
As for not having a dryer, I didn't use that UK one for anything but towels and sheets and didn't have one when I lived in Japan. It was really not too bad, but my Japan apartment's shower room converted to a drying room that I could use if the weather was too bad for line drying. Right now, I decided to move into a less expensive apartment with a coin laundry and line dry a lot of my clothing inside and then use a steamer to get out the rest of the wrinkles. Usually I can hand pull out most of the wrinkles when I put things up on the line.
I hang as many clothes and linens as possible outside as often as possible, and considering that we live in Texas, that's pretty often. Still, I do use my dryer fairly often.
Clothes hanging outside in the back yard behind the privacy fence don't bother me at all, and they tend to dry very quickly for about 9 months out of the year. However, during really humid or rainy days, a dryer is certainly nice.
Not a necessity but a nice luxury. I could live without one and that's the truth.
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They will end up three houses down the road depending wind direction and bearing a soft red tinge which will not wash out. You can dye cotton Ok red on a permanent basis.
