Hang Drying Cloths

Hang (Air) Drying Cloths #

I’ve found that hang drying cloths over using a cloths dryer has some pretty neat advantages:

Less Work #

IF you hang dry your cloths in a place where they can stay indefinitely, then hang drying leads to this laundry workflow:

  1. Wash cloths
  2. Hang dry - this must happen now because cloths are wet!
  3. Easily find what you want to wear (since everything is hanging up) and wear it.

I find this easier than my previous workflow, which was:

  1. Wash cloths
  2. Transfer to dryer
  3. Put in laundry bin to fold later
  4. Never actually fold later and dig through the bin to find stuff when I need to wear it. This is especially annoying with socks. And it leads to wrinkly cloths.

Even if I did fold the cloths, I find that hanging cloths up is easier physically easier than folding them and putting them away.

Longer Lasting Cloths #

Cloths seem to wear out less quickly for me using this technique. Unfortunately I have no evidence of this and am a biased source, so this may not actually be true. I’d be surprised if cloths wore out more quickly though!

Cheaper #

If we assume the average cloths dryer using 3000W and drys cloths in 2 hrs, then to do one load of laundry takes 6kWh. In Seattle, this would cost $0.11/kWh * 6kWh = $0.66 per load of laundry. So not much, but something!

My Current System #

I hang my cloths above my 4-poster bed, which I find is a pretty efficient use of space:

Empty

Corner

Cloths

One thing to be careful of is the weight of the cloths on the structure you’re using, which can be significant!