Is Drying Your Clothes On a Line Better for You?

Hanging your clothes outside is a wonderful way to save money and space in your home. There are many benefits to outdoor washing line drying, the most notable of which is that outdoor air will naturally deodorize and disinfect any damp clothing. This not only saves you from having to use harsh chemical-filled laundry detergent but also prevents odors from building up in your house or apartment! Read more about outdoor washing line drying below.

Drying your clothes outside is a great way to save money on electricity

Yes, drying clothes that would normally be dried in a dryer outdoors can save you money on your electric bill.

It’s easy to forget how much energy is needed for an electric dryer. The average home may use 1,500 kWh per year in electricity to run the items in the typical family’s washer and dryer set–that’s enough to run all of your home lights or heat your house for six months. Depending on where you live, this could represent an 8-12% increase in energy costs each month.

When you dry your clothes outside, the sun’s UV rays naturally kill bacteria and fungus that may have been living in them

It’s true that UV rays kill bacteria and fungus. The intense UV rays of the sun are needed to do the job, but because clothes come into contact with so many surfaces during their normal dry cycle, it doesn’t take much for them to become contaminated again. When you dry your clothes outside, the sun’s UV rays naturally kill any bacteria or fungus that may have been living in them. This not only gets rid of unwanted irritants, it also decreases instances where mold will grow on damp clothing which can stain or damage delicate fabrics. 

Drying clothes outside is more eco-friendly than using electricity or gas to dry your laundry

Drying clothes outside is more eco-friendly than using electricity or gas because it reuses natural resources to create heat. For example, natural sunlight heats the air around your clothes, which in turn generates warm currents of air that dry out your clothes. This means that only the suns’ energy is being used – no coal, oil or gas! And since drying our clothes doesn’t need any kind of mechanical power, it creates less waste and pollution than electric or gas powered dryers.

The natural sunlight will also help bleach out stains from your clothing 

It’s been shown that the sun can bleach out stains from cotton clothing when the fabric is left in the sun for just 2 days.

In order to take in sunlight in a usable form, old-fashioned clotheslines are great. Just make sure you hang your wash in a place where it will receive direct sunlight and avoid heavy shade or hot spots from nearby buildings or other tall objects, so that your clothing dries quickly and loses its odors completely.

You don’t have to worry about wrinkles when you dry your clothes outdoors – they’ll come out all by themselves!  

Wrinkles happen when we overstretch fabrics. They break the fibers and drag them sideways. These little tears in fibers are what creates wrinkles, so if you hang your clothes outside they typically don’t wrinkle at all!

This is because gravity helps keep our clothes flat. The air offers a lot of fluid resistance as well, especially on humid days where the air has more moisture to cling to for better aerodynamics. So it’s actually way easier to get wrinkles out of clothing which have been dried outdoors vs those dried indoors with a drying machine because you don’t need any special tricks to make the fabric much softer and easier to iron! 

You’ll never have to worry about mold growing in damp areas of the house again

A good way to minimize the potential for mold growth in the house is to get in the habit of drying your clothes outside on a sunny day instead of tossing them in a shredded pile on an indoor rack. The sun’s UV rays will kill any pollen or fungus that may have been picked up from fabric. Laundry rotations are the number one source of mold spots in the home.