I wish I could line dry the laundry. In my community, I am not allowed to do that, but, this summer, I am planning to get one of those retractable lines and have it on the patio. It's not going to be visible from the street so I should be fine. Back in Europe, we used to dry them outside even during winter...they would become hard like a piece of wood and then we would bring them in the house, close to a terracotta fireplace and they would dry. I loved the smell of freshly dried clothes. They smell clean.

You can hardly se the rack though I purchased it at ikea. It takes 3x5 space. Starting at the bottom I hang socks, boxers, tshirts. The top can be used to dry items flat. I have even hung five pair jeans at one time. I place it over a vent that blows the heat in the winter. The drying takes about a day. Nicer shirts I hang on a clothes hanger and hang from a clothes rod in my laundry. The comforter over my railing. I am so cheap trying not to use electricity.

@hayleydaniels, Oregon is not that humid anymore. I lived there for about 3 years and it used to rain a lot. Now, it's no longer like that. I have family there and they have less rain that we have on the East Coast.

@hayleydaniels, I live in the PNW as well and line dry starting in March (if I am lucky), taking the lines down in October. LOVE my clothesline and wish I could line dry all year round. The thought of mildew, however, stops me. In spring and fall, takes longer due to cool, moist air, so I need to plan accordingly, which I am happy to do. Nothing smells better than clothes dried outdoors.

HI -- There is nothing like the smell of clean laundry that was dried outside . I remember my Mom out in the cold trying to unwind the laundry that the wind tangled around the lines with a broom handle . Also bringing in the winter frozen stiff shirts and sheets etc. and hanging it all on lines strung in the basement to dry the rest of the way. Now you should see her once beautiful , now poor twisted arthritic hands from doing that for so many years. In the winter her little hands and fingers were almost frozen blue on laundry day which was always on Monday without fail . In the summer she always had a little smile on her face when pinning the wet laundry on the lines . My Dad built out the back porch and the pole was beside it with double lines and pullies connected to the other pole across the yard so she could just step out the kitchen door to hang the laundry .The same grape basket of clothes pins hung on the porch post for years . Most of the wooden clothes pins were gray with age . I have a dryer but have been tempted to have an out side line or rack , but just for the summer and just for that clean smell again .

I had to line dry for a couple years. With all due respect to those who do it, I think it is a bit romanticised (which I totally understand, I love the outdoors). I had to check for bugs, run out if it got horribly windy or started raining, it doesn't work well in the winter at all, and it takes a lot longer. That 'fresh' smell was barely perceptible to me. I personally prefer the softness of a dryer and the faint smell of my detergent.

Wow! I am so glad I'm in aus. I line dry 95% of the time even during winter. I have a 12 line clothesline attached to an outside wall which is open to the elements, a retractable 4 line clothesline under the verandah and a clothes airer if I need extra space (two young children can dirty a lot of clothes!). I try to use the dryer only if I'm desperate for socks and underwear! I just think that if you have the opportunity to use less energy and do your bit to help the environment then why wouldn't you?

Also from Australia, and glad to hear that people do line dry in US. From looking at Houzz pics and ideabooks on laundries I was beginning to think dyers were used almost exclusively. I have two children and live in a part of Aus that has a very cold winter - but have never owned a dryer. I use moveable clotheslines so I can chase the sun in winter and avoid it in summer. When it rains I can carry the clotheslines inside. One is small enough to carry by myself, the other a little larger so needs an extra pair of hands. I can't imagine what my electricity bill would be like if I used a dryer - even for just two children.

I grew up on the beach and we lined dry our wet towels and bathing suits before we brought them in the house, but then they went in the washing machine and dryer!

I have never used the dryer. Winter or summer, clothes hangs, usually indoors. For those who live in cold or damp climates and think they can't do this, you're wrong. No matter what the conditions, the key is that the air be moving, even very gently. If so, it will always dry within a day, no mildew. And the clothes lasts forever (dryers are very hard on clothing).

I learned this from my mom, who used her dryer so little (perhaps twice a year) that it was like living at the Smothsonian. It was 50 years old and in pristine condition.

For us in Montreal, winter means dryer except for a few items I put on my staircase railing.

I haven't had a dryer for 16 years. I had forgotten how good it was when I bought sheets during a family visit in December and used mom's washer and dryer. When I got the sheets home, the smell gave me such a headache, I had to rewash and hang out. Being a "no dryer" home requires some coordination with the weather but so be it. The clothes do last forever.

I still hung them up outside for awhile then brought them in to hang on dryer racks, the smell from hanging outside is incredible, I live in a townhouse now, not supposed to hang anything out but I think I will put the sheets on a rack on the 2nd floor deck

No dryer here (although fancying one now with baby no. 4 on the way!). We have a log burning range in our kitchen that does all our heating. When we built our house I specified a towel radiator in that room to dry all my clothes in winter.

You can see it behind my computer chair in the back corner of my kitchen. Above it is a pull out airer:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leifheit-83303-Teleclip-Mounted-Dryer/dp/B0028PVUNG

I love hanging my clothes outside. It helps the environment by conserving energy. Plus makes me feel good by enjoying the benefits of freshly dried garments by what God gave us the sun, and the air we breathe. The best part is the aroma of those items.

Where I grew up it had a lot of minus 20f days, and the laundry would come in stiff, get laid out and when it got limp it was dry...

Outside in summer, with our low humidity, high temps, and constant wind; a line long enough to peg the whole load... start at one end and by the time you got to the other, go back to where you started and unpeg the dry clothes. Washer could not keep up with the solar powered dryer. Jeans would have to be left until the next load came out, or sweats.

Here either I hang it inside to dry during winter as the humidity issues (rather low both winter and summer) are helped by that extra bit; or I use the dryer. (I had to break down and buy a dryer a few years ago, I broke a bone in the top of my foot and couldn't keep up with pegging or clipping and hanging my laundry to dry)

[you are old or very rural or both, if you remember some days of the week were laundry days and you were NOT supposed to burn your garbage barrel, some crud upwind of you would forget and give the entire neighborhood a good swirl of cinder and ash all over the formerly-clean-clothes ... the days of sprinkle the cotton with the little silver thing that fit in a soda bottle, then roll up and put in plastic bags in the fridge for an hour or two, then iron....]

My husband has built me a simple long narrow leanto structure on the side of the house so I can hang the washing out & the roof keeps the rain off it. Its wide enough to have 3 lines of washing. First saw something similar in Norway. Next year we shall improve on it by cladding the long side with transparent sheeting but leave the ends open.

That sounds brilliant macklucy1, no more rushing out when it starts to drizzle... do you have photos? x

My European rental didn't come with a dryer, so I put up lines in my furnace room/basement bathroom. Most of the year, it's either dry in the house from the heating or dry outside. In Spring and Fall, there can be a few weeks when it's too wet to hang outside and too warm for the heat to be on.

To hang your laundry, you need to do a load every day or so, rather than expecting to get a week's worth of laundry and umpteen loads done in one day. I have a dryer in America and I use it because it's there. Plus, the laundry hanging options in Europe are so much better. There are a million different sizes and shapes, while the same, awful rack is often the only choice in America. Vertical so the stuff on top keeps the stuff on the bottom from drying, attaching at the top, so it's easy to collapse if you're not careful, and the bars are too thick for many clothespins.

No dryer here, only lines and a rack. Indoors in winter, works as a humidifier too.

I use my dryer for most things. I line dry delicate items on an indoor rack. Allergies prevent me from appreciating the amounts of pollen brought in by items dried outdoors.

I remember my mother trying to dry the household laundry during the winter months. Clothes and linens were draped over every available surface in every room of the house. I also remember when the new washer and dryer were delivered -- it was a two martini night in our house, I can assure you.

As a single parent of two kids, with a full time job and a long commute I never considered hanging my laundry outside to dry when a perfectly good dryer sat at the ready in the next room. Now I have more time but still no inclination to haul wet laundry up from the basement to hang in the yard. Too much work. I like my dryer. A lot.

Not that I can't hang things out when it's -40 I choose not to. During the warmer months I hang out my whites, bed linens and mats.

The thing that stops me from line drying more things is (and this is especially true for heavier items like towels and jeans) once they have gone through the dryer they never come out as soft on the line. This has to do with over drying in the dryer so now I tend to take things out when they are ever so slightly damp. I spread the laundry on the folding table and it's dry when I get to it again ( usually by the time the next load is done).

Whites on the line get bleached back to white with the sun. The sun works for yellowed or stained plastic also and you can speed the process with a paste of peroxide mixed with cornstarch and plastic wrap over it.

I do a mixture of line dry & electric dryer.

In the warmer months, (generally May thru October), I line dry our sheets & most clothing outside. Undergarments are NOT hung for the neighbors' viewing. Those are hung on the basement clothing rack.

During cold months (or when raining), my daughter's & my clothes are hung on the drying rack in the basement- when you are very tall, you can't afford clothing shrinkage. I do have a long line hung near the basement ceiling that can handle sheets if needed. Towels & jeans, socks & cotton undies go in the dryer. No one in my family likes crispy drawers :)

I line-dry the washing all year. I live in Sydney Australia and our winters here are very mild with daytime temperatures hovering around 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) . The clothes dryer I have is now 24 years old and still works like new because it gets so little use - and that tends to be finishing off the drying if the wet weather arrives suddenly and the clothes outside aren't quite dry yet. Gets used maybe twice a year. I have to say I love hanging the washing out in the sunshine - there's nothing like it.

Because of property fencing here, neighbours can't generally see what is on the neighbour's clothes line so everything is hung out - frilly underwear and all!

I've never used a line to dry clothing. I've always used a dryer. Never knew it any other way really. After reading the comments above, I am tempted to give it a dry...oops! I meant try ;) Anyhow, I live in a very humid climate. This may not work so well for my household as drying out of doors would take ages. Maybe I can fashion up one of the bathrooms to accommodate . Any suggestion for humid climes and the indoor air dry attempts?

My mother didn't have a dryer until I was a teenager (say, 1977), so all the laundry was hung outdoors in the summer and in the basement in the winter. There's nothing like the fresh scent of line-dried sheets and pillowcases. As a little girl it was lots of fun to play between the drying sheets and towels as they reacted to each breeze.

When I got tall enough, I helped to hang and bring in the clothes. It was fun to use the pins to fit as much laundry as possible on each line & it was important to load each line roughly equally with the weight of the laundry so the line didn't tip. I remember trying to mimic how my Mom gave each piece of clothing a good snapping shake to shake the wrinkles out as much as possible before hanging. You wanted to make sure you didn't wrap the clothing around the line when you pinned it down, or you'd put a crazy crimp in the sheet or shirt.

Taking the laundry down was usually done as quickly as possible, collecting the pins and putting them into the hanging bag they came in. I think ours was from the 40s -- it looked like a piece of clothing on a hanger.

@Texas Sky

The tricks to successful line drying are:
1) Have your drying rack/line in the sun, preferably on a breezy day.
2) If it rains a lot, it's better to have it under some kind of cover. I have an overhang that I put my line under. It won't protect the laundry in a shower, but it will in a little drizzle.
3) Find a place to dry your laundry that's out of the way, so you aren't brushing by it in your bathroom or looking out the window and the first thing you see is your laundry.
4) Don't do more than a load or two a day. Do laundry when the weather looks promising, rather than trying to do all your laundry on a weekly wash day.
5) get a good drying rack.

And Texas Sky, it will save you some cash! (lots if you have kids) Even if you only used the dryer on very humid days to get the last moist out. A bit of extra work, hanging it all, but the saved pennies can be used on other fun things!

And let's all not forget it's much better for Mother Nature too :)

All I know is I'd love to have that laundry room!!!

All year long and I live in Canada...

I am in the Inland Northwest (southeastern Washington state) and we can pretty much dry outside all year. Very dry here, not humid at all. However, we have dusty high winds often. I have a friend who NEVER uses her dryer; through 27 years of marriage and several kids too. She toughs it out, no matter what I line dry inside when the wind is up. A good majority of my clothes are line dry anyway. Don't have any pictures, as we are just finishing the new house and the laundry room isn't ready for pics! But, it's going to be pretty.

You are not allowed to have an outside clothes line in my Gulf Coast neighborhood, except after Hurricane Katrina, when everyone strung rope lines and dried not only clothes, but any important papers, priceless rugs, etc. you could put your hands on. I remember hanging laundry out when I was young, and loved sleeping on fresh sheets; stiff towels dried outside, not so much!

Almost never line dry my clothes....they are always too stiff and I hate fighting the bees, wasps, and other assorted bugs that want to hang out around the clothesline and clothes pins. I live in the woods so I always have some sort of dust and or tree pollen to deal with too. I love my dryer!

No matter where I hang the humour I can't get it to be dry enough.

As long as the wine is dry Chook :)

A good point indeed, you could bottle that.

chooky, glad you're back in the land of the internet :)

Glad you're still happy, Happy.

It's not attractive, I'll tell you that much. I've got hangers hanging anywhere I can hang them from!!

The mafia are keeping profits up and costs down. They've cut down on dryer use


http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-32734450/stock-photo--euro-banknotes-hung-on-a-washing-line-symbolising-money-laundering.html

I'm not sure why for lots of people the line drying is coming out stiff....maybe only the outdoor drying does that? We're not allowed to line dry here either so we always dry indoors, summer or winter. Our bathroom doubles as the laundry room. So many items we own must be washed and dried by hand that all of those we do in the sink or tub and then hang to dry above the tub.

The rest of our clothes go in the washer and drier (reluctantly on my part, I've never liked the drier. I hate the almost burnt smell it gives clothes and how quickly they get ruined. But because the bathroom is the laundry room as well and we only have one for all of us, if we washed and dried everything by hand no one would ever be able to use the bathroom. Maybe someday in a slightly bigger home I can dry everything indoors)

In the summers it gets difficult as we use our heater for it, and the bathroom turns into a downright sauna and that heat goes all over the house but we still manage ;)

With our bathroom door closed and the heater in there, all clothes (except wool, which takes DAYS luckily we only own one wool item) take 3-4 hours max to be totally dry and softer than the drier, so that is why the crunchy clothes part surprised me. One of my favourite things is when air drying they come out so soft....but that may be only indoors.

Like I said I hope in a future place we can have a dedicated laundry hanging area. It's just great. It doesn't ruin clothes, they actually last, it comes out softer than the drier and it's much more convenient as for us as the washer drier at least here are shared amongst about 4/5 other residents, and you always have to run to make sure no one takes the machine before you do...washing and drying at home is much more convenient. We also have to go outside to get to the laundry room, which isn't so fun with a sack full of laundry on boiling or freezing or rainy days...

When we used to have a drier in our own property, our bills were OUTRAGEOUS, so much so that we actually had to calculate when we could afford to do laundry! Because we had the same bathroom problem there too we used to hang quite a few things on the stair railings (now we only have one floor) but it still didn't really work out.

Like other people said, when you hand wash you need to do a small load everyday rather than leave it for a once a week thing. But with a family even when you do a load everyday you still need lots of hanging space, which indoors we don't have which is why we are limited. Outdoors we do but we are not allowed here...

To the commenter that said about the romanticized idea....I think you are partially right. For us it is downright convenience, but I have to say all these people's experiences here of going outdoors on a beautiful day to hang laundry sounds fun and relaxing. And if we have to do chores anyway, I think it's great when we find cool ways to make it more fun for us. I think romanticizing any chore if you can, you should. It's more fun! :)

I hate drying my clothes in dryers, they always have that warm rubber odour to me and you have to be there when it finishes and take them out straight away if not you spend your life ironing it all. I use this fab folding dryer from Ikea and if it starts to rain I just bring the whole thing inside. I don't care how long it takes to dry and ironing is a breeze as everything is almost flat. And when not in use it folds out the way flat. Love it but I love the fresh smell to my clothes even more :)

I use the dryer for sheets and towels. Always line dry clothes, winter and summer. I'm in Canada so in the winter the drying rack is is in the furnace room where it is always warm and dry and things dry overnight.

I line dry my delicates and clothes that may shrink in the heat of the dryer. Otherwise, dryer. I'm allergic to pollen, weeds, grass, blossoms, mold, you name it....so here in the deep south with the humidity and the pollen, I'm just one big sneeze. I hang up my clothes inside in contact with the a/c vents in summer, and up high in winter to catch the heat.

"In contact" meaning in line of the air that blows out of the vents, not directly on top of them....lol

Been drying indoors for most of my married life. On hangers mostly or those fold out dowel rod clothes horses. I bought the really sturdy ones many yrs. ago. My dryer just. sits. Matter fact the one dryer went south for not being used and replaced parts on sev yrs ago .Just in case. Have ceiling fans going in unused bedroom year around. that helps a lot. Sometimes dry outside on my umbrella revolving c lines. But I hate worrying about pollen Just a. saying thanks all and Blessings to all

Where I live in LA, our yard is visible to others on higher lots so laundry is only dried indoors. I dry only dainties on a drying rack in the laundry room. The rest goes in the electric dryer. To avoid ironing, I am ready when a tablecloth is ready to remove from the dryer, and I drape it over a sofa to cool down before folding to avoid the worst fold lines.
I hang Hubby’s shirts immediately, and my tees are laid out flat for a while before folding.
I’ve always lived in the Los Angeles area, so rain was a rare issue when I was a kid, and our mother used clothes lines for all the big things and the “laundry room” was a washing machine in a shed outside behind the garage. No indoor laundry room. Four kids and two adults in a (maybe) 1200sq.ft. one-bathroom house.

After you line dry put them in the dryer for bout 10 mins with a dryer