Clothes dryers.
Our home's primary electric source is coal. This makes us think long and hard before using the dryer. Did you know that a clothes dryer is the home's second biggest user of electricity?
In the summer I use a clothes line
outside as much as possible.
Providing a good space inside during rainy weather and the winter months has proven to be a challenge, though. A single line strung up in the garage lead to stinky clothes and not enough room for more than 1 load. For a few months between the rain and then snow storms I got lazy and started using the dryer. Then the guilt came. I went almost an entire year without using the dryer! At some point with 2 active young'uns I felt tied to the chore of laundry with coordinating required to sync it to our ever-changing weather.
I came up with a baby step to get my family back OUT of using coal-electricity to dry our clothing... I'll share it with you now.
Every wool sock (all of our adult socks and some of the kids), fleece things and shirts do not go in the dryer at all, ever. I hang them up in the bathrooms to dry. By doing this little thing I am able to only use the dryer once for every 2-3 loads of clothing. This has been GREAT! It has really cut back our home's carbon footprint. I'm not usually a baby-steps person when it comes to sustainability though.
So now it's time to push it even further... my desire for this year is to try to buy used as often as possible. My daughter and I have looked several times at thrift stores for those wooden fold up drying things without any luck. I'll probably go ahead and purchase 2 new and then I'll be able to dry ALL of our clothing without using a penny of coal-powered electricity and I won't feel like I'm shackled to the laundry pile when it's sunny out. At our house things dry well overnight - a good time so that little hands won't destroy the arrangement.
Don't get me wrong...I LOVE hanging clothes outside and will continue to do so. The sun has some amazing powers! UV rays are a great way to disinfect your clothing including kitchen towels...and they're also nature's bleach!
I'm on my way to clothes dryer freedom again! Yippee!
I found some great tips to make your use of clothes dryers more efficient here. If your homeowners association prohibits the use of an outside clothesline, gather your facts and petition to change it!
1 comment:
Rah Rah you can do it! When we bought our house a few years ago I never bought a dryer out of laziness but have since committed to it for environmental reasons. We are lucky and have a laundry room that is decent sized so I can hang things in the winter without them being in the way of little hands! I'm a one-minute walk from a laundromat but have only used their dryers during extremely humid summer weather. Like you said, it just takes a little getting used to!
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