My mom hung clothes outside back in the 50’s. I remember her checking to make sure no one was burning leaves or garbage before she put the clothes out. Then dad was able to buy a dryer and that was the end of that.
It costs money to shop at a grocery store, more than if I foraged (I do love dandelions) but I have plenty of money to shop. And I have plenty of money to dry my clothes in a dryer. Energy savings never enters into my decision.
I’m old enough to remember the time when my family didn’t have a dryer OR an automatic washer. (We did have a ringer washer and a washboard once.) When these first became available and affordable, the time and effort saved was much appreciated. I can’t think of any good reasons I would ever want to give that up in an urban, civilized society, just like I don’t want to return to cooking all meals on an open fire, hauling water by hand, using an outhouse, lighting my house with candles, or traveling to the store on horseback.
I’ve come across “airing cupboard” from time to time in British stories and TV shows. What, exactly is that?
I’m picturing a small room or closet that has windows that open to the outside (hence “airing”), but can it be big enough to hang up a whole load of laundry. If there is no outside air access, then where does the heat/dry air come from to “air” out the things stored there? Is this standard in UK homes and apartments or only in fairly large-ish residences?
Never heard of those. Our propane-fired heater has a little horizontal chimney thing out the side of the house.
If I still lived in SoCal, in a house, I’d hang my clothes to dry. Up here, hanging outside isn’t much of an option because of the rain; and it’s also Kingdom of the Spiders.
If it can’t be machine washed on Hot and tumble dried, I won’t own it. Just pulled a load out, as a matter of fact. Now I have to reclaim it from the cats.
It’s usually just a small cupboard which houses the hot water cylinder (where water
is heated by an immersion heater, or a coiled pipe from a boiler), so it’s usually quite
warm. a bit like this !
They are often bigger with more shelves and hanging space in larger houses.
Modern houses have instant hot water heaters, so no need for the cylinder or the airing cupboard This explains it all.
Put me in the “don’t like the feel of line-dried clothes” category. Also, much of the year it’s too cold, or too rainy, or there’s too much pollen to dry the clothes outdoors. I actually have a clothesline, which I sometimes use for beach towels and swimsuits, and I air dry bras and a few other smaller items indoors. But I think of clothes that can’t be tossed in the dryer as fussy.
They come in vented and ventless models–my tiny house has 11 ft ceilings at the roofline but very little in the way of available wall space so the ventless model allows it to be out into the room a bit in a place it fits and is away from anything flammable. It’s pretty nice and heats up a 450SF area just fine–it will actually make things uncomfortably warm if I don’t keep it down on low. This is the one I have:
My house was built in 1925, and I’m guessing the hot water heater was added much later. It stands in the kitchen totally exposed right out in front of God and everybody. I’ve got photos stuck all over it with magnets.
American tumble dryers are much better than European tumble dryers. We have a condensing dryer which basically beats the clothes into submission and leaves the clothes and sheets wadded up into a tight ball, more or less dry. Meanwhile in America the clothes waft around in a huge drum on great billowing gusts of hot air and come out dry, warm, fluffy and wrinkle-free.
The airing cupboard was mentioned above. (In Ireland we call it the “hotpress”.) In cold, damp countries like Britain and Ireland it’s traditionally been an essential part of laundry management. Sheets and towels are folded and put away in the airing cupboard. When they are taken out for use they are not only bone dry but also pleasantly warm.
Unfortunately the rise of on-demand heating and highly insulated domestic hot-water cylinders has led to the demise of the airing cupboard in many homes. We lost most of the space and heat in ours when we had a 200-litre factory-insulated cylinder installed as part of our heat-pump installation.
And I would say the opposite. My European heat-pump dryer doesn’t waste heat. So much so, that I barely crack the window when it’s drying. My clothes are dry and wrinkle-free, but barely warm.And it doesn’t wear out the clothes so fast.
American dryers cook the clothing. My mother’s American dryer puts more wear and tear on the clothes. Same with my sister-in-law’s dryer. I really notice the difference when I wash clothes when I visit them versus my home machines.
I live in an apartment and have to go to a laundromat. It’s in our leases at the apartment complex that we can’t dry clothes outside, though they ignore swimsuits and towels. Also I notice lots of people dry kitchen and bathroom mats on their patio/balcony railing.
I also dislike that scratchy stiff feeling of line dried clothes and towels.
I also live in an apartment which has a laundromat. I don’t recall any rules against air-drying but I don’t bother (most of the time).
It’s currently very cold where I live. I don’t think air drying would work. It does get hot in the summer, though. The only place to air dry would be the balcony, which (not being the top floor) doesn’t get much sun.
My mother likes to air-dry to save money, and has to ask me if it’s going to rain before she tries to do so. Given the lack of sun, I assume it has to take longer, but it does get done.
Thank you. I never really understood what an “airing cupboard” was and when I’ve tried to look it up , I’ve always gotten definitions like " a heated cupboard used to keep linens warm and dry" that didn’t mention the hot water tank. And I wouldn’t have assumed there was a hot water tank involved, since I’ve never seen a house or apartment where a tank was in the living space and needed a cabinet. ( Either the tank is in the basement or it’s newer construction and doesn’t have a tank)
When I was a growing up in the 50s/60s, we didn’t have a dryer, and mom thought there was no point in having girls if we didn’t pitch in with the chores. Laundry was one of the chores. This was in SoCal, so mostly it worked. I can remember my mom setting up some kind of rack in the garage if it was going to rain, and the laundry had to be done (with 4 kids, it always needed to be done). But again, SoCal, so those days were few and far between.
Once we got a dryer, only bras and other delicates were line hung. Everything else went in the dryer.
Now I live in a small townhouse, and there’s no space inside for a rack, and HoA regs prohibit hanging anything outside (we have no garden space) – even towels and swimsuits after returning from the beach (we’re three blocks from the beach). And because we’re so close to the beach, we’re more humid than most of the city (we got rid of the wall-to-wall when we remodeled – it was gross).