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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

I recall talking to some europeans and they said they like their driers, which only half dry clothes (they put them up on a line to finish) but use less energy. It's some sort of virtue thing, I guess.

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Overdrying clothes damages them. Hang-drying clothes increases the clothes' longevity.

This guy launders!

(Joking aside yes this is completely correct.)

My collection of 20+ year old T-shirts does not support this hypothesis. my experience has been the agitator in the washer is what causes the most damage.

The lint in the lint trap comes from somewhere, and I really doubt that much material is flying off of air dried clothes.

I can't see any problems with this; those are tiny fibers and they don't make a big difference except over years. It doesn't affect the weave that much.

Judging by the color of my lint, 99% of it comes off bath towels rather than clothing. At least, with my towels and my clothing.

(My towels are a very distinct shade of red, a color I never wear. The lint is the exact same color.)

Lower quality towels have a very loose weave that easily comes apart both in the washing and in the drying. Some of the very worst, in my case Eastern European, towels are so bad that they show near bald spots after just 3 washing cycles.

Aren't most washers in Europe front-loaders, which do not have an agitator?

What causes the most damage to my old T-shirts is deodorant stains. :(

For shirts I run through the dryer, they don't seem to have suffered much by it. But I don't run printed designs through the dryer, because they take serious damage that way.

Most of my T-shirts survive this (and I love having things come right out nice and dry) but there are 100% cotton and 100% wool clothes that shrink. I try the lower temperatures but the only real sustainable way I found was to lose weight continuously so I can fit in them. The others I just send to the laundry guys. Don't know what they do but it usually comes back nice.

Considering how popular synthetics are these days, I suspect it's because they use small combo washer/dryers in Europe. Certainly my British washer/dryer combo did a good job.

Damage of clothes through the washing/drying cycle is mostly the result of the kinetic energy they are exposed to in the process. Keeping a lower net weight load, and reducing the rpms in the spin cycle can have a large impact on longevity.

This makes zero sense. I hang dry most of my laundry because, why not? But the few things that go into my tumble dryer had better get out completely dry, what would be the point otherwise? Recent dryers with heat-pumps take longer but consume less energy.

The irony is that dryer sheets promise "spring breeze" scent and have pictures of clothing hanging on a line outside.

Nature provides both the ideal outcome (great weather and lovely-smelling laundry on the clothesline) but also a lot of much-worse scenarios that drive the use of technological solutions. Like a long humid rainy season where hang-dried clothes does not come out smelling nice at all.

Or in my locale, a long dry pollen season that's murder on my sinuses. :(

Or a long, cold winter season where the clothes won't dry and may well freeze =(

Not virtue, but space probably. A small apartment doesn't dedicate space to a dryer, and the washer typically spins at 1400 rpm, at which point clothes are half dry (like 15 minutes in the dryer).

Only really cold & rainy days is this a problem

It's not a virtue thing. Energy is just very expensive in Europe compared to for example the US.

I'd still pay the cost, because energy is cheaper than my free time.

It takes like 2 minutes to hang a full load of laundry.

If you are "synchronously" doing laundry, ie. waiting for the load to dry, then we must admit it's slower, though this may vary with the seasons and climate of your location. But if you set it aside in the morning or evening, then go out and start your day as you normally would, you're OK.

In some cases this might mean you plan your laundry better. Eg. you start laundry when you have at least 1 set of clothes to wear for the next day, instead of when you have 0 clean clothes to wear.

I do the laundry for the house; it's about 4 loads a week for 4 people, which I mainly batch up because if I'm not paying attention to the wet laundry, it can sit in the washer and get stale. It would take more like 5 minutes to hang a load- do I hang it inside, or out of my crowded home (it's in the 4-10C range outside now), so you're talking about 20 minutes, spread throughout a day. Alternatively, I can just dump the washer load into the dryer, and come back when the dryer finishes. For a busy professional, this is huge.

One of the things I missed the most living in Europe without a dryer (this was the norm in my experience, at least when/where I lived) was a warm fluffy cotton towel fresh from the dryer. I pay 8-9 US cents per kW/h which with a 240V 20A dryer (little known fact even to people who live here, almost every house in the US has both ~240V and ~120V service) pulling 3000W in service runs me about 25-35 cents a load or closer to $1 in Germany. Worth it.

"some sort of virtue thing" sounds like cynical way to describe ethical values.

Yes, most people I know don't want to waste electricity on driers even when it's cheap.

I have had quite a few shirts ruined by dryers over the years. These days I just hang them up.

I am European. I don't have a drier and I don't know why I should buy one. For me diers are just a waste of space and energy.

I'm curious: How do you handle clothes washing and drying?

I'm not the OP, but share his views.

I wash my clothes in the washing machine, then hang them to dry, that's all there is to it. It takes time (about a day) and some space for the clothes hanger in a rather small apartment, but that doesn't bother me.

Thank you.

But how do you hang wet clothes and not ruin your floors?

Sorry if I sound stupid. American apartments aren't set up for this and I would rather handle it this way and I've had challenges.

Most washing machines have the spin cycle which removes almost all water that could drip out. So I haven't noticed any water that drips out as such. Also, you have a specific place in some apartments for this with different type of floor.

Yeah, okay, to be fair, I was hand washing clothes, not machine washing. And I do recall living in Germany and there were places to hang wet things that we don't have in American apartments.

But I've seen some hang-to-dry things that could be used over a bathtub.

Thank you!

I at least have a place to start doing research.

>But I've seen some hang-to-dry things that could be used over a bathtub.

I have this in my apartment (Sweden). After I've done laundry I hang my clothes to dry over the bathtub, then move them onto a separate drying rack in the morning (so I have space to shower), and by that time the clothes have dried enough so there's no risk of dripping on the floor.

If there’s a specific place with a different floor (and maybe dedicated ventilation), I find a little odd the argument that a dryer (which sometimes even stacks on top of the washer) is a waste of space.

Unless I put too much in the washing machine that it can't spin properly, most things don't drip when they are hung up. And for thick wool jumpers that do drip we have a mesh thing to lay them on over the bathtub, and anyway the floor is tiled.

Thanks.

Most US apartments have wall-to-wall carpeting, not wood or tile floors. God, how I hate it.

If you put a towel underneath you can dry them flat on top of the drying rack. No dripping observed so far.

All modern washing machines spin >1000 RPM in the end. Clothes are pretty dry already after that, there's no dripping.

> Clothes are pretty dry already after that

Dry and very wrinkled

Washing machines spin the clothes, so most of the water is already gone.

But it is true that you need space and a fitting room as the drying can create damp rooms that need a good ventilation.

I think many people actually have driers but don't use them if they can dry them otherwise. A disadvantage of drying by air is that the clothes can get pretty hard. Some use fabric softener for that.

Its not too much wet, you get rid of most of the water by spin drying. I have stone floors so I wouldnt be bothered anyway

Also it helps if you live somewhere with reasonable humidity.

If your washing machine spins your clothing at 900-1400 RPMS, it should be simply wet, but not dripping wet. Never saw a drop on my floor.

Talking about dryers: Buy less clothes made out of fleece. If you wash them, you create microplastics that land in the oceans.

Advertising is far ahead of you: the driers have a feature to keep the clothes just damp enough for perfect ironing. The same driers have A+++ energy ratings, because progress. They carefully avoid hinting at a connection between these two because the virtuous ones are not in the market for a drier.

And most appliances reach their A+++ rating by including a special "Eco" setting(s) that in practice many users opt not to use in their daily routines.

Also, most (all?) dryers over here will have multiple settings to select ending the drying cycle at different sensed humidity points, from 'maximum' dry to 'cupboard' dry to 'ready for ironing' dry etc. These programs are more convenient and used much more commonly than setting a timer for the cycle.

my Miele drier does not half-dry clothes.

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