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| Photo Credit |
We have a clothes line in our back yard. I just can’t use it much. We have used it on occasion when our neighbor’s horses are not in the pasture by our yard or when we’re hang drying our couch’s slip cover. Our daughters are allergic to horses and since the farm next door is on the west side of our property the wind blows dander and hair our way. On a very windy day if the horses are out the girls have to be careful where they play so they’re not in direct wind of the horses otherwise they have itchy, watery eyes, and runny and sneezy noses. Anywho…it poses a problem for me and my frugal nature. I have come up with a plan, however, and it works pretty good so I thought I’d share it with ya’ll.
I wash my clothes using THIS RECIPE in my front loading Bosch. I think I’ve saved lots of dough over the last few years using this high efficiency contraption! I am super thankful for it! When drying lights or darks I’ll pop them in the dryer (again a Bosch) on the lowest perma-press setting. After about 10-15 minutes the beeper lets me know they are ready. They are still quite wet, but the dryer has taken the excess moisture out of them and fluffed them enough that they won’t be stiff. Some shirts are dryer than others, but they are all still on the damp side. I take them all out and hang them up. I have a drying rack that’s attached to the wall that can hold about 8 shirts/ dresses on hangers.
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| Something kind of like this. Photo Credit |
Then there’s a small rod between the wall and a cabinet in the laundry room that holds about 4 shirts/ dresses on hangers. I also have a few hooks in the hallway and another rack that I can hang up about 5 or 6 shirts in the hallway to dry. My future plan is to have hubby put brackets on opposite walls in the laundry room so I can hang a removable rod to dry more shirts so they can be a bit more concealed in there instead of hung hither and yon in the hallway. He’s also going to install brackets and a removable rod in the garden room (a small room off the hallway that holds our pool gear, swimsuits, towels and a mini clothes line — I’ll get to that) so I can hang even more things up.
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| Kind of like this…but with plastic hangers. Photo Credit |
After I’ve hung up all the shirts I then run the rest (usually shorts or pants) in the dryer on another cycle until they are mostly dry. A few pair may have to be draped over the chair since the waistband is damp, but they are dry in a few hours. (I plan on having hubby make me another drying rack so I can take them out and drape those over when I also take the shirts out.)
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When it comes to the towels I take the wet bath and hand towels from the washer and drape them over a Wooden Clothes Drying Rack
When it comes to undies and socks, those get dried in the dryer..I don’t like my unders to hang dry. First off we don’t have enough space…can you imagine how many pairs of unders I have to wash?! And if we have company drop by I really don’t want them seeing our unders. You know? *smile*
All of this to say that sometimes you have to get creative when you want to shave a few dollars from the budget. This has helped our electric bill since I’m not running appliances longer than I need to (they are high efficiency but they still use electricity) and I’m not heating up the house and causing the air conditioning to run more than it really needs to. I also get the satisfaction of “hanging out” without actually going outside in the sun and heat. *double smile*
Do you hang outside? Everything, including unders? Do you hang some clothes inside? Am I the only one? Ferris? Ferris?