Hannah“IT’S really raining out there,” my roommate quipped while we were watching television the other night.
A split second later, our eyes met in a shared a look of terror and we sprinted to the bedroom that has the window with the clothes drying rack outside of it.
Our perfected routine began in earnest as he pulled the clothes in, threw them to me, and I arranged them around the house, hanging them from chairs, door handles and shower curtain rods.
Living without a clothes dryer has been a non-issue most of my time here. I didn’t miss it until winter started which meant hanging clothes outside was no longer an option due to the rain and hanging them inside meant waiting two or three days for them to dry.
The environmentalist in me is smug knowing my little victory is saving a lot of electricity and teaching me valuable life lessons about what I really “need.”
The sentimental side is also pretty happy – it’s so picturesque and small town-ish seeing clothes drying outside of windows even in the center of town. Part of me loves sharing in that experience.
Sometimes, though, leaving your clothes outside on a day that was clear until the sun went down then silently changes to an evening of rain, wind and hail, makes me homesick for the extravagance of a clothes dryer.
My best option seems to be drying all my clothes inside the apartment until May.
“Seeing clothes drying outside of windows even in the center of town. Part of me loves sharing in that experience” One Life Required Please!
If you don’t want your clothes to take that long to dry. Here are some things that I do to help cut drying time. I always run my things through the spin cycle twice. If it is a load of heavy towels and jeans I may even fluff the clothes around in the washer and spin them around a third time. The more water that gets spun out the less that has to evaporate. They even sell high speed clothes spinners that will get out more of the water. The other thing that I do to help dry faster is to make sure that I put my clothes on the laundry drying rack so that they get as much air flow around them as possible. This means I often put the rack in the middle of the room over night. Again if it is heavy hard to dry items then I turn on the ceiling fan for a little assistance.