Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors
npr.org
npr.org
This works reasonably welly while car-camping or situations where doing dishes is annoying, or water is scarce but sunlight's plentiful.
direct sunlight for baking off mold and mildew and bleaching whites are other old but effective tricks.
This only works on a lawn, doesn't it? The combination of grass, sun and water produces hydrogen peroxide.
Does it really? How does that work?
In the USA, we don't hang clothes out because we changed our cultural norms with the introduction of convenience machines. Once air conditioning became affordable, we all bought it. Same for refrigerators, dish washers, garbage disposals, washing machines, and of course dryers. Having a machine to do your work for you was seen as a middle-class status symbol, in addition to relieving housework.
Once line-drying became passé, people began to dislike the sight of line-dried clothes (it reminded them of being lower-class) and so was now "unsightly". Neighborhood association bylaws were passed to ban line-drying completely, and many apartment buildings also banned the practice. So now around 80% of homes in the USA have a washer and dryer, and people in apartments use laundromats or apartment facilities.
This article from the BBC mentions the millions of U.S. homeowners who were banned from using clotheslines: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11417677
Some advantages:
1. Clothes last longer with less dryer agitation
2. Less agitation means less lint
3. Lower carbon emissions and gas/electric bills
I have a gas clothes dryer at home but I hang dry my clothes year round.
In the summer I have a line, more delicate and fade-senstitive items get hung in the shade while towels, sheets, undershirts, socks and underwear can go in the sun. If you hang them in the morning or evening when light is less intense, or bring them in as soon as they dry during sunnier hours, there's very little risk of fading in my experience. The most delicate items are hung inside on a drying rack.
In the winter or rainy periods I have a folding indoor drying rack that I hang clothes on. It takes longer but still works. During furnace weather I can leave them in front of a vent and the dry furnace air gets some humidity as well.
Some tips if you haven't hang dried before:
You may notice your clothes are stiff after air drying. Depending on your water hardness you may be using too much soap (most detergents recommend too much). Try using less, or add plain white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser (no commercial softener)
Vinegar will soften the water, remove soap buildup from the washer and clothes, and leaves fabric soft without any other artificial softeners.
Gigantic gas-powered clothes dryer is one of the only things I miss about life in USA.
A lot like cooking food, that's a time to let your mind wander and breathe.
But I still do it because it seems wasteful to use a dryer, and damages the clothes as well.
YMMV, of course...
(Possibly relevant: my clothes consist primarily of a few identical pairs of shorts and fatigue pants, and 20 identical heavyweight no-brand T-shirts, plus maybe a hoodie...)
In contrast, my experience with the dryer is clothes and up looking threadbare and worn from a high heat dryer. Just look at how quickly the lint trap fills up.
I wash my clothes and dry them according to type with automatic settings which end the cycle early if the clothes are dry before the full cycle is complete
On the flip side when I lived in a place where dying clothes outside was the norm there was no avoiding sun bleached clothes unless you dryer your clothes at night (which only partially worked because it was a tropical climate)
Another benefit of line drying is you don't need to iron, we don't iron clothing. The only times I've ironed in the last couple of decades is job-interviews and attending Buck House.
I use the dryer for clothes that don't matter, and line dry the nicer ones.
Likewise washing without tumbling is much gentler but clothes dry a lot longer.
The second photo is my newest t-shirt, and the fourth is the oldest.
That looks like a huge difference to me, the first shot looks super old whereas the last shot looks brand new. What sort of difference were you hoping for?
I wonder if I'm looking at it the wrong way, and all the "fluff" has been sucked out of the fourth one by the dryer, which probably weakens it.
Line-dried clothes and beddings smell wonderful (even if you use detergents and softeners that don't contain perfume) after hanging out to dry.
To each his/her own!
I don't put a ton in, and I imagine most of it is neutralized by leftover soap residue and a relatively hard water supply.
Land of the free where you can shoot a person that enters your garden but you can't dry out your clothes there because it's unsightly.
Freedom encompasses freedom of association, where you may voluntarily agree to additional restrictions as part of such an association. The definition of freedom you seem to be using is incoherent. You can't have both the "freedom" to enter into a voluntary contract and also the "freedom" to violate the contract at will. The two are contradictory.
Back to the topic at hand, this is pitting the aestethic feelings of some versus the right of others to be thrifty and efficient (and green, as line-drying is definitely more environment-friendly than using a machine which pulls 2-5KW of power).
It would be much more thrifty and efficient if I could walk around naked and shit and piss where ever I want, because then I wouldn't have to buy clothes, clean them, or waste money on flushing a toilet.
I honestly don't understand how all that freedom neighbourhood association restrictions work.
pretty much everyone who lives in these kinds of places has at least one rule on the books that they think is dumb, but at the end of the day most people do actually want their neighbors to cut their lawns and stuff like that, so they choose to live somewhere that has at least some of these restrictions.
What if I own land there because I bought it or inherited it? At which point do I freely enter those free neighbourhood associacions and agreements? Are they attached to the land? How exactly are they free if they are bundled? Is it like "freely" agreeing to see ads because if I don't agree I'll be cut out from the service?
In my country interaction between people that live side by side is regulated by actual law and since it's universal it's limited. Like no emission of unbearable smells or actual poison and no constant noise. It's nobody's business if his neighbour cuts grass provided he doesn't do that all the time with especially loud lawnmower.
HOAs and the people who subject themselves to them are a self selecting group who want that kind of stuff. In some wealthy suburbs the town government functions basically like a HOA trying to maintain property values by keeping the "wrong" people out and keeping the "wrong" kind of development from happening. However, local governments mostly don't concern themselves with this level of micromanagement, it's the exception not the rule.
Caring about "unsightly" things is universal to rich busybodies worldwide. It's not about freedom, it's about doing things that inconvenience poor people so they don't move to your neighborhood.
For every horror story about an American HOA there's an equivilent
>Land of the free where you can shoot a person that enters your garden
Outside some very specific circumstances shooting someone who is on your property is likely to put you behind bars regardless of what state you do it in.
it might have that effect in some cases, but I don't necessarily think that's the intent. people put a lot of effort into making their home and yard look nice and they want to live with other people who also care. I live in a quiet lower-middle class neighborhood and people will be all over me if I don't cut my lawn for a few weeks; it's not just a "rich people" thing. I don't call them busybodies though. I get to enjoy the product of their work every time I sit on my porch, so I don't mind doing my part to make the street pleasant.
I like my HOA and it isn’t to keep poor people out. No more than high rent in SF is to keep poor people out. Market forces do that. I don’t think HOA is some evil force. I am biased of course, I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. Towns have building codes and appearance codes as well, sometimes for practical reasons, often purely for aesthetics.
Not having castle doctrine is equally if not more scary. The idea that I could wind up in jail because I didn't make enough effort to retreat within my own home is not exactly comforting. The idea that one has to retreat within their own home or personal vehicle is just kind of absurd to begin with. I can through my own actions greatly reduce the (already minuscule) chances of getting shot by someone else in their home. I cannot through my own actions effect (or at least not to nearly the same extent) the chances of having my life threatened by someone else.
I don't live somewhere "nice" by HN standards (I'm perfectly fine with where I live). While my house will probably never be robbed it will also probably never catch on fire yet I have smoke alarms and a couple fire extinguishers.
>and appearance codes as well, sometimes for practical reasons, often purely for aesthetics.
This is the HOA-esque behavior I'm talking about. Yes, it's common in suburbs of SF, on Long island, etc. It's not the norm.
Many are unaware that in the U.S. the police is not responsible for an individual's personal safety; see Warren v. District of Columbia, Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, etc.
If my home had two pairs of doors I'll be rushing through second one the moment I thought someone would try to brake in through the first one. Not because I had to, just because defending your stuff with your life and health is a bad choice. You have one life and body that will not be the same again after it's shot or stabbed or beaten, but you can always earn more money and get more stuff.
I can't just buy another wife
only if you spend a lot of time in other people's houses uninvited.
Or walk by police while black...
There are so many similar examples, that I wonder what this "free" part refers to anymore...
(Of course back in the day, even back in 1920 or so, Europe was a lot more regulated than the US).
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-it-illegal-florida-powe...
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resourc...
There's an updated "American Pie" song in here somewhere...
So I think you might be stretching it a bit to say that they're ubiquitous here.
In my experience, the only flat I've rented that didn't have a dryer was a student hole in Preston that didn't have a washing machine either.
Maybe it's a sign of the times, maybe Lancashire is a cluster of dryer-lovers, but this is my anecdata.
"In the North literally every house has one."
"they've been ubiquitous since forever"
Clearly, neither of these things are true.
(I can't comment on the north, Scotland etc; I haven't been in enough private houses there.)
There's usually a breeze, and unless it's actually raining the clothes dry soon enough outside.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers-in-...
Shows that only a little over half even have dryers. One look around from my back garden tells me that this is fairly accurate (if anything, I would say more than 50% of my neighbours dry on a line outside)
>Same for refrigerators, dish washers, garbage disposals, washing machines, and of course dryers
Ime, dryers aren't the same as the others as they tend to ruin clothes used so a reliance on them is bad
In America “You’re free to do whatever you want”
Conditions apply.
The other problem with drying clothes outside is pollen, pollution and other allergens and irritants.
If you don't have a stay at home spouse then it can be problematic. You have to put them out during the day, which means you'll be at work. If there's a change in weather, then there's no one at home to bring in the clothes. So you come home from work and your clothes are still wet.
If you live someplace where it rains frequently (even if they are just light drizzles) then it can be hard to get clothes dry on any kind of predictable basis.
Which means that people end up setting up clothes drying racks inside of their house, in a living room or bedroom.
In Asia, it is very common to have a wife, mother, or mother-in-law at home during the day which solves all these problems. Got a sudden two hours of sun? Put out the clothes to dry.
(I myself, though, sure as fuck have a dryer machine, although it’s an anemic little 100V electric job, not a gas-fired behemoth like I’d have back home in California...)
No thanks; ain't got time for that. Energy production needs to move away from fossil fuels anyway, if anything me using more energy just makes that more economical...
Surprised nobody else mentioned a big reason: Pollen.
I can get away with drying most of my clothes outside, but if I do bed sheets outside, especially during the spring, I get terrible allergies from them.
In our household, only socks and underpants and pyjamas and stuff like that go in the dryer, the rest dries outside (or, in a room with the window open when it's cold).
(very western: we're a Dutch and Danish couple)
My average cotton/poly/whatever t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, last.. I don't know. A decade?
Hanging clothes outside is pretty common in Australia which is a so-called Western country (and inventor of the Hill's Hoist for this very purpose). Other than the US, the rest of the Western world is pretty much Europe, which gets enough rain and short days in winter that they have other systems (i.e. clothes driers) that are probably convenient to use in summer too.
Also, electric driers cost money to buy and run, which developed countries have a lot more of.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/world/americas/17clothesl...
* I use a washing machine
* The dryer is directly on top of it
* Moving clothes between the two takes roughly 10 seconds
* I don't have a clothesline(s) in my yard
* Land might be utilized for other things, requiring more complexity than just hanging (eg, pulley systems and the like, which of course you see in many places)
* Energy is cheap
* Time is precious
* I tend to prefer fluffy clothes out of the dryer to stiff hang-dry clothes
But to me, the number one indication that your expectation is unreasonable is that you specifically mention "even in summer". With that comment, you're indicating an awareness that hang-drying may be inconvenient or impractical during part of the year. If that is the case, and now you need a machine to do the work, why not use the machine year round? You already paid for the convenience, so at this point, the only reason NOT to use the machine is to save energy.
On a personal level (I live in California, so the weather is almost always nice), the number one reason I don't hang dry clothes is because it takes way too much time. I can rarely be bothered to even put my clothes away after doing laundry. I find it extremely tedious to deal with every garment individually.
It's really not feasible here. Some people hang their clothes to dry inside in sun rooms, but it's not very common. It's easier to throw them in the dryer.
Random google search result comparing wear-and-tear of line-dried and tumbler-dried clothes :
https://www.reviewed.com/science/how-dryers-destroy-your-clo...
Italy, Greece, France, Spain are all for it...
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...
No, it shouldn't. Despite what some people say about "life finding a way" (a quote from a movie, mind you, not like, actual science), there's plenty of stuff that life can't adapt to. Being exposed to its fundamental substrate at above-local-boiling temperatures is one of them. It's a physical attack. There's also some techniques that kill bacteria by poking them with nano-scale spikes. You might get something slightly more resistant than before, but there's no scenario in which some bacterium evolves something other than a fatty-protein cell wall and suddenly you get these cells encased in pure titanium or something.
(I am aware of extremophiles. You'll note they still live where water is liquid in the local pressure/temperature regime, and I guarantee you that if you try to "infect" a human with an extremophile that the outcome will be a race between the human immune system killing it, and the extremophile simply keeling over dead due to not being able to survive in this environment. If it isn't already dead due to essentially freezing to death.)
Plus, even if it did become resistant to steam, that quite likely still play in your favor. In order to become resistant to steam, it would have to give up other things that it currently spends its "budget" on. Odds are pretty decent that in the process they'd evolve into something less adapted to bothering you. Again, contrary to some people's beliefs that bacteria are infinitely adaptable, they actually live on a very tight budget due to how competitive their spaces are; if they add an adaptation to something, they're going to give up adaptations to something else in the process. Nothing is free to them.
Exactly this.
When bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic, they typically do so by giving up a metabolic pathway. If you take away the antibiotic, they usually quickly revert to the 'wild type' of bacteria.
As for becoming resistant to steam, even if they could do it, once you stopped applying steam, then they'd probably be unable to survive at room temperature.
So sick of bullshitism on the Internet.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/infant-...
Most of the US is hot and humid enough for most of the year that this would just end up creating damp, musty-smelling sheets.
If Eastern Europe had the same climate as most of the US, AC would be more common there too. In the parts of the US that have a milder climate, AC is much less common.
Airing out our bedroom/house is quite common.
That means that when you sweat, it doesn't evaporate. And it doesnt make you cooler. And the sweat then warms up to the air/body temperature, and further blankets you in hot... And you sweat more.
Some scarier numbers, mammals die without shelter in around 8 hours if the temp is 35°C (95 °F) in saturated (100% humidity) air.
Although, it's a dry heat - I pity our east-coast and southern friends... the humidity makes it feel a whole lot worse!
In any case having the windows open for some time daily allows to change the air and it prevents moulds and similar, particularly in modern homes where windows and doors (and the actual building envelope) are airtight.
Living in a recently built home with a good energy rating (please read as insulated and airtight) but without a mechanical ventilation system is - as I see it - a health risk, unless you adopt this traditional routine daily.
Anecdotally, a family member of mine has one of those "led light therapy" systems[4]. Initially he was going to a local clinic to use one and ended up buying one of the packages for himself. I have seen person after person experience shockingly beneficial effects from using them (like people are saying "this is the first time I've slept without pain medication in years". From putting a pad covered in bright LEDs on them for 40 minutes. People are so skeptical, then suddenly their chronic pain issue is mitigated by simply sitting there.
0: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3438385/ 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4126803/ 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799034/ 3: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/heals.html 4: https://www.balancedlivingllc.com/light-therapy.html
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
But the extra bacteria is indeed more probable, especially if you notice that the kind of mold growing on the in-house fruit appears to be different than the ones left outside.
Plus they love to wash dishes with boiling hot water.
"A home where the sun do not visit, gets a doctor's visit"
It'd be like training yourself to breathe underwater like a fish.
Or training yourself to molt like a snake.
You're simply not designed with the right hardware for the task, not matter how much "practice" you get. Amazing how people can convince themselves otherwise.