Notes on energy, dryers, and hang drying clothes

This post is a departure from my normal tech/self-hosting musings and instead about doing laundry. I’ve worked hard to get good at air drying our laundry and below are my notes on how I do it each week.

At the beginning of the year I was on a mission to drastically reduce our power consumption. I had two main drivers. One, being self-employed means I need to keep our bills as consistent as possible so I know the minimum amount our home needs to function. Two, I take climate change extremely seriously and I am always working to reduce our impact.

I went through our house with a fine tooth comb identifying how much energy everything used. Naturally, this lead me to our clothes dryer, which for a family of 6, uses a gigantic portion of our monthly energy consumption. I’ve worked for the last 9 months to come up with a system for hang drying our clothes. The system still isn’t perfect, but I’m happy with the results. My goal was to reduce our energy bill by more than $20/mo. and I’ve been able to do that by significantly reducing our dryer usage. This is what I’ve learned so far so that I can hang dry 3 loads of laundry a week and only use the dryer once.

Organizing the process

1. Laundry only gets done one day a week. I do not do it when bins are full or someone wants to wear something specific. Laundry only gets done on Saturdays.
2. Separate the laundry into 3 piles. As a landscape contractor, my work clothes get absolutely filthy. Those get bundled with anything else that is heavily soiled. Pile two is the rest of the clothes that can be hang dried. Think shirts, pants, shorts, etc. Things that are easy to hang. Pile three is our personal items like socks and underwear. These do not get hang dried and instead go in the dryer. I do this because they are a pain in the ass to hang and no one wants their underwear on display in the backyard.
3. Setup permanent clothes hanging areas. I do not have a clothes line. Instead, I use hangars that I put the clothes on and then hook onto our backyard canopy. I know when people think of air drying clothes you probably picture the classic clothes line with pins or clips. Thats too hard. I just put the clothes straight from the washing machine onto hangars. This gives the clothes plenty of room to dry and makes it easiest hang. I also have a A-frame style clothes rack that I use for our towels and anything else that doesn’t hang well.

Hang drying tips

This is what I’ve learned during the process that makes air drying easier and my preferred way to dry clothes.

• Hang one items per hangar. The clothes need lots of room around them to dry faster.
• Don’t lazily hang them. Make sure the clothes are hanging neatly and aren’t bunched or crumpled. The more it is bunched, the longer it will take to dry, especially in the parts that are wadded together.
• Hang in the morning and just leave it all day. I have enough hangars for two loads of laundry. I’ll wash them in the AM, hang them up, and then take them down all the next morning. Its actually way easier than dealing with the dryer since I don’t need to constantly check on them.
• Flip anything that is folded around the middle of the day. There are some clothes that can’t fit neatly on a hangar (like pants) and have to be folded. Fold them neatly and as few times as possible. Then, around mid afternoon, flip them over. This is the only work that needs to be done after all the laundry is hanging.
• Humidity is your enemy. The higher the humidity, the longer the dry times. We are lucky in the Puget Sound region to have dry summers with low humidity. The Fall/Winter/Spring seasons are a totally different story. But, I have been able to keep my schedule even with the high humidity by drying the garage with a fan. It just takes longer.

I know I said I was reducing my energy by not using the dryer and then recommend using a box fan when drying indoors or on humid days. The reality is the box fan only uses 30w and the dryer uses 3500w. I can use a box fan for 8 hours and use 240wH of power. When we use the dryer, it runs for 3+ hours at 3500w, or 11,000wH. I could run the box fan all week and still use less energy.

Lessons learned

• Our previous washing machine was terrible. When I first started it would take 2 or 3 days for the laundry to dry. That’s when I realized that our washing machine was only spinning the clothes at about half speed, which left the clothes more damp than they should be. Not only did this lead to longer dry times, but it was also running up our energy bill since we had to run the dryer multiple times per load. I always thought our dryer wasn’t good, but it works fine when the clothes are still completely saturated.
• Its really important not to put the clothes close together or sharing hangars/rack space. Any spot where clothes are over-lapping each other will take forever to dry.
• Direct sunlight isn’t necessary. I have not noticed a measurable difference between drying clothes in the shade or direct sunlight.
• The key to faster drying is having air movement. You don’t have to hang them outside if you don’t have the space. I will hang the clothes in the garage on rainy days with a box fan running and I am still able to get multiple loads done in one day.
• Hanging small items sucks ass. This is the main reason why I just put all our underwear, socks, etc. into the dryer. Its worth it to me to use the energy for just one load for these items. Plus, these items are small and light, so they dry very fast in the dryer.
• The longer it takes for the clothes to dry, the more likely they are to be hard and crunchy at the end. Also, if there is air movement, they are more likely to be soft when dry.
• I prefer air dried clothes. I know they aren’t as soft, but they feel more clean, hold their color better, and wear out slower.

I’ve also started to consider air drying as a factor for when I purchase clothing. Thick, heavy garments or with lots of folds and creases are less favorable. Shirts that are made to “wick” moisture dry really fast (since they are made specifically for that purpose when you are wearing it) are preferred and I can layer on cold days. That being said, I couldn’t care less about fashion.

Conclusion

So far doing this has saved us at least the $20/mo. I was hoping for. We are, on average, saving around $30/mo., which is $180 for the year at this point. It also doesn’t take much longer than using the dryer. Per load its about 20 min. to hang everything up and then I just forget about it the rest of the day (except anything that needs to be flipped).

I know not everyone is in a situation where they have the space or time for hang drying clothes. But those that can, I really encourage you to try it for a few weeks! If not for the money, its significantly better for our climate by reducing your energy consumption.