I haven’t used a drier on my clothes in more than a year. The advantages of line-drying clothes are too many to count: they last longer, smell better and if you give them a good firm shake before hanging, are completely wrinkle-free. Problem is, I live in Florida, and it’s been a mite rainy lately. Not just afternoon thunder-showers, but morning drizzles and noontime humidity. Everything is wet, constantly. Cotton mildews quickly in the heat and humidity.
People obviously washed and dried their clothes round these parts long before driers became commonplace. People around here probably wouldn’t wait a month or two before the weather cleared up, notions about hygiene in the old days nonwithstanding — what the heck did they do on laundry day in the rainy season?
A flat I lived in in Scotland had a very nifty device which was a flat barred clothes rack attached to the ceiling in the kitchen, which could be hoisted up and down with a pulley. You let it down, loaded up the clothes, then yanked it back up out of the way. The kitchen’s likely to be the warmest room in the house pre-central-heating, so that’s a good choice, and the pulley arrangement stops it getting in the way.
I actually do a similar thing at the moment, with a fold-up rack and the central heating vent in our bedroom. I figure the heat’s on anyway, might as well make use of it. I don’t much go for dryers.
You recall episodes of “I Love Lucy” where she’s drying clothes inside the kitchen. There are comic episodes of “The Honeymooners,” where Alice dries Ralph’s clothes in the kitchen too. Of course in one episode Alice left Ralph’s long-johns outside and they froze
A lot of flats in Scotland still have them. Generally they’re just calley ‘pulleys’ and most of them have 4 horizontal bars 5 or 6 feet long for putting clothes on.
edit to say this is expanding on Aspidistra’s post
I live in a flat and use one of these. On warm days I can put it on the balcony outside, otherwise, it’s a semi-permanent fixture in my spare bedroom.
In Ye Olden Days, they used a pulley device as the others have shown. Generally hanging from the kitchen ceiling, which would have been the warmest room in the house.
In Spain the usual models for inside lines are either a foldable rack which gets folded flat and stuck behind a door when not in use, or a different one which is bolted to a wall and gets pulled open horizontally. The first ones are bigger.
Missed my edit to say, I once inherited one of these old fashioned pulleys in a small Victorian house I once lived in. It was a bit kitsch for my tastes and I didn’t fancy enhancing my nice clean washing with Aroma di Chicken Jalfrezi (or whatever else I was cooking), so I used it to dry bunches of herbs and chillis.
Come up to Canterbury Shaker Village in Canterbury, NH some time. The 19th century Shakers designed a building set aside as a laundry, and, in good, efficient Shaker fashion, they designed a series of drying racks that could be trundled in and out to efficiently dry the clothes. Kind of a set of separate racks on runners, with (IIRC) forced hot-air drying.
The pulleys were standard in Budapest flats, as well, but they were typically located in bathrooms, over the tub. And they were constructed of a metal frame with row of clothesline spanned across instead of wooden slats. They were quite handy, and with the high ceilings of the average Budapest flat (usually around 12 feet), your laundry would soar well above head level and remain out of the way.
Yeah, exactly… there’s a reason for the term “Spring Cleaning” - for many people, it was the first time they could properly wash and dry laundry after winters that were either too cold or too wet for outdoor line drying.
Especially if you can finish off the operation in the airing cupboard:-
*An airing cupboard is a large built-in wardrobe, sometimes of walk-in dimensions, containing a water heater; either an immersion heater for hot running water or a boiler for central heating water. Shelves, usually slatted to allow for circulation of heat, are positioned above or around the heater to provide storage for clothing, typically linen and towelling. The purpose is to prevent damp and to dry wet clothing. Other names include “boiler cupboard”, or (in Ireland) “hot press”.
I remember when I was young that my uncle had an old fashioned setup in his basement, even though by then it was very much antiquated. He had a modern washer and dryer as well, and may have used the older setup just to save money on occasion.
He had two tubs in his basement, both of which had legs so that they were at a comfortable height to use while standing. The first tub had a washboard in it. You’d fill that one with soapy water and scrub the clothes. The second tub had a wringer attacked to the top/side of it. You’d rinse the soap out of the clothes in this tub then run the clothes through the hand cranked wringer. This would squeeze so much water out that the clothes would only be damp instead of wet.
If it was nice out, you’d hang the clothes on the line outside. If it wasn’t so nice out, you’d hang the clothes in lines inside the basement.
ETA: Since the clothes were only damp instead of wet after coming out of the wringer, they wouldn’t need anywhere near as much drying time as they would coming out of a modern washer.
