Chemical analysis and origin of the smell of line-dried laundry | Hacker News Reader

Chemical analysis and origin of the smell of line-dried laundry

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157 pointsbookofjoe103 comments

In Ontario, Canada, some condo boards for town house developments (like home-owner associations) didn't like people putting up laundry lines and so prevented them since backyards were considered "common elements" and under group jurisdiction.

So the provincial government had an existing law that prevented the use of "renewable energy" systems from being blocked by local by-laws and such. So they classified clothes lines as a renewable energy system so people could use "solar power" to dry their clothes as a energy conservation mechanism.

> "There's a whole generation of kids growing up today who think a clothesline is a wrestling move," [Premier] McGuinty said during his announcement.

* https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-premier-lifts-outdoor-clo...

The current Ford government repealed the law that allowed for this, so I'm not sure what the legal status is now exactly.

I have a similar clause in my rent contract in Germany, forbidding line drying, and first I didn't really understand why people care about this (I planned to use the communal dryer anyway).

But to be explicit, it's because the optics of visible laundry makes people associate to poor people who have no other drying options. They don't want the neighborhood to look like poor neighborhoods.

Maybe it will become one of those environment-conscious hip modern things and then they will start allowing it again...

Meanwhile, living in Japan, if you tell people you prefer to machine dry your clothes, they’ll tell you outright that it’s wasteful. The assumption is that it’s only used when rain makes it impossible.

In Spain the attitude is similar, but for different reasons.

Environmental consciousness is sadly low in general, but cult to fashion and looks is strong. Machine drying anything but towels and sheets would be considered shabby by most, as it damages clothes.

When I was looking for housing, I visited some really luxury apartments (that I could never afford, but visiting is free and I'm a curious person, so why not) and having a good place to line dry clothes was always seen as a boasting point, never associated to poverty in the slightest.

I guess that you still centrifuge clothes, but do not tumble-dry them?

yes

> Machine drying anything but towels and sheets would be considered shabby by most, as it damages clothes.

So does UV light.

Your clothes get faded in the sun. A dryer quickly wears down the fabric and makes holes.

I remember reading somewhere where an author realized all that lint they collected from their dryer was a result of their clothes literally falling apart fiber by fiber. In other words all the mass of the lint didn't just spontaneously form breaking some conservation of mass law but came from the clothes shedding and abrading against each other.

Depending on the clothing item, turning it inside-out may help (e.g., reduce colour fade).

Not only that, but it helps protect screen printed elements on graphic tees and such.

But less.

On the Swedish west coast where it's often windy and sunny we typically line dry our laundry. We do have a machine dryer, but it's typically only really used when there's too much humidity in the air (which doesn't happen often) or it's raining. Line drying typically yields better and more even results in my experience, especially when it's breezy.

Most of the dryers I've seen there didn't have external vents, and were often combined with the washer. They were really lousy at drying. Do you think that's part of it?

Not that you claimed anything else but: A bit less than half of all households in Germany have a dryer[1], air drying is very common. Your landlord cannot prevent you from drying clothes within your flat, any terms to that end in your lease are void ([2], IANAL).

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom... still more than I expected

[2] https://www.mieterbund.de/index.php?id=597

Running a dryer in my Northern German apartment in the summer was miserably hot. I can see why they're rare in places without widespread AC.

Banning line drying is the kind of thing you do when you're afraid your neighborhood might be mistaken for poor if there are a few backyard clotheslines. It's a middle-class class anxiety thing.

Another reason is that if you do it inside your flat (which many people do in Germany) and then do not open your windows enough there will be mold. Especially in winter this can be a problem.

It’s not true. If building has any reasonable ventilation (and it must have one in order to pass inspection and norms) it should has at least 3-4 air exchanges per hour. So drying inside wouldn’t make that much of a difference to cause mold by itself. It may be different if ventilation system is not functioning properly but in that case it should be fixed anyway.

Are you refering to German building codes here? Most German apartments that I know have no active ventilation system except in the bathroom and maybe the kitchen.

As far as I know, yes (although I don't live in Germany) but with disclaimer that it possibly allows old buildings to stay with the ventilation they were build with (which used to have decent ventilation via fairly poorly airtight doors and windows). It doesn't matter whether it's active (and by active you mean having ventilation hole in the room or fan?) or not – it should provide necessary exchange anyways. Maybe it's not true for the old buildings that weren't updated but in that case they are not healthy to stay in – whether with or without line drying.

You'll probably get as much moisture in the air from a hot shower or boiling a bunch of pasta.

Regardless of the source of moisture, this is a sign of poor construction via not using proper building science. The vapour barrier needs to be on the warm side of the insulation so there are no cold spots where condensation can occur.

I mean, sure, but many of the houses are old. The bathroom and kitchen usually have ways to deal with excess moisture, but no space to hang the laundry. The other rooms have space but no such provisions.

However, if you don't start to modify things you can basically carry on forever by law (currently). (E.g. the wiring in our flat precedes the second world war, which is legal if you don't make changes. No, I don't approve.)

That can happen (look out for dew on windows), but usually the heating season leads to the air being too dry. That's uncomfortable and can e.g. damage wooden instruments.

I wonder if these methods would be allowed if one put up a frosted glass greenhouse of sorts to obscure the view yet allow sufficient light and wind to pass to allow them to dry reasonably well.

When I was in high school my family lived in a housing development that was designed to be somewhat environmentally friendly -- houses were small, the development was largely open prairies, people did not have lawns, etc. Of course, someone decided to line-dry their clothes, and the HOA told them to stop. I guess the environment is all fine and nice until you have to see someone's underwear in their backyard.

(I believe that the people told to stop made a big stink about it and had the rules changed. So common sense did prevail. But no doubt plenty of people are producing CO2 to dry their clothes right now because someone thinks that drying clothes outdoors reduces their property value.)

We once rented a flat, in a nice building housing mainly retired people. One day we gave the place a good cleaning and hung out a mat to dry on the balcony. Within half an hour the residents association which we didn't know existed were knocking on our door and demanding we take in the offending item.

I will never until my dying day, live under the thumb of an association. Its a magnet for pedantic busybodies.

Sometimes your choice is between a shorter commute and an HOA. Avoiding an HOA may cost you 5-10 extra minutes twice a day, 5 days a week.

I completely agree with you, and at the same time, that criteria can turn an already difficult search into an impossible one.

Just to bring this into sharper focus: 10 minutes a day, twice a day, 5 times a week for 50 weeks a year amounts to 5000 minutes per year, or just a little over 83 hours. Personally, I would find that acceptable just to not have to live in a place where people tell me what signs I can place in my lawn or what color I can paint my front door, but opinions can and do vary from person to person.

Oh, and BTW, the word "criteria" is plural. Its singular form is "criterion." Not that it takes away from your point, but consider it a tiny piece of friendly advice.

> Just to bring this into sharper focus: 10 minutes a day, twice a day, 5 times a week for 50 weeks a year amounts to 5000 minutes per year, or just a little over 83 hours.

Or two full-time work-weeks worth of extra time, just spent commuting, every year. Definitely not worth it to me; in practice, the primary interaction I have with my HOA is the continued requirement to pay them.

(All else being equal, I'd much rather not have one, but I wanted a walkable commute more.)

> Oh, and BTW, the word "criteria" is plural. Its singular form is "criterion."

Not anymore: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/criterion#usage-1 . "The plural criteria has been used as a singular for over half a century." Much like "data" and "datum", it's no longer an observed distinction; "this data" and "this criteria" are entirely correct.

But in any case, I was talking about both HOAs and distance, so a more elaborate form would have been "that combination of criteria". One could also argue that an HOA is a whole collection of related problems in and of itself.

Its not like the commute is useless time. I did it for years, and being alone with my thoughts (or the radio or an audiobook) was just another part of my life. Still I prefer not doing it, agreed.

Anyway, false dichotomy? Not all housing choices within range are burdened with an association?

> Anyway, false dichotomy? Not all housing choices within range are burdened with an association?

That depends on where you are; in some cities, the vast majority of housing developments have an HOA.

Which is also why I lean towards libertarianism...

As someone without a hope in the world for owning a house any time soon, what kind of teeth do these associations actually have to enforce their whims?

As part of the purchase, you are given the deed restrictions and you contractually agree in the closing process to follow them. We once backed out of a purchase when we read the overly strict restrictions.

You also contractually agree that the association has the ability to fine you for violations and put a lien on your property if you don't pay. There are plusses and minuses. The minuses are obvious - PITA, picky busybodies, limited paint colors, landscaping restrictions, etc. The plusses are that in general, the whole neighborhood is typically better maintained - paint, lawn, general upkeep, etc. which affects your property value.

Can't you buy from the owner and not sign the contract with the HOA? Presumably the HOA has a contractual grievance with the prior-owner; or are such HOA contracts enshrined in criminal law?

HOA restrictions/membership are part of the deed of the property, so you can only acquire the property subject to those restrictions/that membership.

My guess is that the restriction is already on the existing deed, originating with the first sale from the builder of the community. So it transfers with the property.

It depends. Unless membership is optional, I would consider it a lesser value home. Which is ironic given its intended function is to (possibly) keep one asshole from ruining property values, in exchange for a different set of assholes (possibly) destroying value in another way.

Exactly.

HOAs sound crappy but they're better than living next to assholes/slobs when you have zero recourse. HOA is really the only entity that will care about assholes. The problem with buying a home is that you don't know what your neighbors are like ahead of time.

FYI, some municipalities have democratically driven regulations; this seems like a much better course if you’re not trying to make a homogenous neighborhood.

Depending on the municipality, "democratically driven regulations" are there to make it harder to deal with the asshole neighbor, not less.

The history of government is trying to trade out different sets of assholes. It's a hard problem.

Depends on the HOA's, which I would avoid at all costs.

If in the US, in some states even up until foreclosure.

I think it depends on where you live. Here in Chicago, if you leave wet clothes out to dry on the line, they’ll stink of geosmin (to which the human olfactory receptors are insanely sensitive, to the tune of being able to detect a few parts per million) rather than smell nice and fresh thanks to the humidity.

https://microbiologysociety.org/publication/past-issues/soil...

Sounds like geosmin is the smell of earth, which to me is a fine smell. Perhaps you're a city dweller that's just not acclimated to natural smells??

Mind you I hate the over-perfumed smell of heavy clothes detergents, so I'm probably peculiar in my scent-life.

It's not the musty smell of the earth (or the smell of rain coming) but rather the pungent/sour smell of a wet towel left sopping too long in the corner or the way your clothes smell (hormones aside) after you go outside and come back in on a humid day.

(I hate the city and my ideal getaway is at minimum a few days in the middle of a forest or on a mountainside, just to give you some perspective of environments I find attractive or repulsive.)

EDIT: see other response with Chicago Tribune link [0], it seems that my description may apply specifically to our region and that wet towels elsewhere might not be subject to this nastiness.

[0]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-11-20-941120...

It's pretty hard to get smell information on the web! Thanks for your response.

Perhaps you're a super-smeller (that's not a pejorative!) and experience smells differently, too.

Now, what sort of look will my wife give me if I order a piece of wet towel from Chicago on the web?

Why is that chemical so prevalent in Chicago?

Great Lakes

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-11-20-941120...

Thanks for the link, I'm pretty sure it's talking about the exact thing I'm referring to. I didn't realize Chicago was special in this regard; I thought it was just a universal "water" thing.

> They may not be dangerous, but they are powerful in the effect they produce. Sensitive palates can taste geosmin and 2-MIB at concentrations as low as five parts per trillion.

I thought it was four per million, five parts per trillion is beyond comprehension! And as far as "sensitive palates" go, I'm always the one complaining to my wife who invariably responds with "it's just you," grumble.

Not OP but Chicago was built on marshland which I suspect plays a part.

https://gizmodo.com/chicago-was-raised-more-than-4-feet-in-t...

When I lived in Arizona, I'd take the clothes out of the washer, step outside, and put them on the line. When I finished pinning them up, I'd return to the beginning of the line and take them down, perfectly dry and fresh.

Who needs a dryer :-)

It really depends on the humidity. In tropical weather, I would hang up clothes in the morning and they would still be damp in the evening.

Same in Perth, Western Australia. Gotta love the desert climate for that.

Same in Adelaide, South Australia. Although it has been raining a lot of late...

I wonder whether the manufacturer of some existing artificial “fresh breeze” scent happened to already stumble upon a formula that closely approximates the chemical composition of the real thing, without knowing it. Do e.g. (scented) detergents contain these particular hydrocarbons? Does any air freshener?

Also: is there any knowledge of these compounds’ effects on the human body? Are they GRAS? I can imagine an evolutionary just-so story where our bodies like the scent because it tells us that whatever’s emitting the smell has, essentially, been UV-disinfected. But that doesn’t mean that breathing the scent volatiles themselves is good for us. Humans think all sorts of bad-for-us things smell/taste good, like ozone or antifreeze.

Oh, that’s where the name comes from.

I hang dry most of my laundry in my own house still. I learned to appreciate this after moving from a big city to a town of 13 people. Of course we all had lots of space but my house had one of those circular drying line contraptions. I enjoyed going out and hanging my laundry, even in the cold winters. Even in the snow. The sun and dry air did their thing pretty quickly.

When I lived in Amsterdam my apartment came with a new combo washer/dryer unit. As far as I could tell, it mostly succeeded in compressing the laundry into a really tight, nearly inextricable ball.

In tighter quarters having lots of laundry drying between apartments could be seen as less desirable. There are solutions for that too. But the noise and dirt of lint coming from drying machines is a counter factor to consider.

And the smell of tumble drying. I live in an apartment complex and the smell coming out of the dryer vents is overwhelming. It's not intrinsic; there would barely be any odor at all if people gave up dryer sheets and fabric softener, but it seems like many have never heard anything so outlandish as that.

I spent a couple years living in high density highrises (putting my YIMBY money where my mouth is, I guess) and the laundry exhaust (and other ventilation problems) traveling into my apartment made the air nigh unbreathable.

That's an issue with houses, too. When my neighbor dries clothes, I have to keep my windows closed. Really annoying in hot weather when I need the ventilation.

I can’t remember a time I ever line dried laundry outside. How significant is this smell, is it worth changing my laundry drying habits just to reproduce it?

Yes. Nothing beats it. Also, drying laundry electrically is a waste of resources, the sun will do it for free, as long as you live in a moderately warm country.

I am always disappointed that drying racks aren't more common in NA. Even in an apartment, you can set it up overnight and wake up to dry clothing in the morning. Better for the environment and your clothing.

Not so good for the apartment though, unless you have dehumidifying air conditioning.

I have lived in socialist-era blocks which are notorious for humidity issues and mold. But a mere drying rack placed next to the window will not produce enough humidity to cause problems if you leave that window open.

Modern portable dehumidifiers are small, unobtrusive (about the size of a cereal box) and whisper quiet (they use Peltier cooling). Every house in a maritime climate should use them.

Well, sure, I do this for my laundry that I don’t want to be shrunk in the dryer. But this business of making it smell good, I don’t understand. Air drying doesn’t impart a smell at all.

I guess it is a matter of taste.. I really don't like the smell of line dried clothes, and I also don't like the feeling clothes have after being line dried.

Probably because of what I grew up being used to.

The smell can be rather significant / roughly equivalent to what you get with a dryer with scented sheets at its strongest.

I rather question how “nice” the smell actually is, at best it’s “interesting and not bad” from my experience. I find that sometimes line dryer laundry can pick up a “clumpy”, rougher but yet distinctively line dried texture when compared to the machine or hang dried inside.

Also, a normal drier pulls out a lot of the fabric lint so if you line dry a lot the clothes will accumulate lint and that adds to the weird rougher texture.

I think it's worth trying if you have the availability (somewhere to set up a line or a rack, and low-ish relative humidity helps them dry quickly).

As for whether it's worth changing your habits: that's up to you. Give it a try, see how they smell, consider the lower environmental impact of line drying, consider the lower wear-and-tear on your clothes (tumble drying wears clothes out faster), and make a decision!

There's two things I remember about line drying from when I was a kid: * Clothes having a slightly "rubbery" smell (similar to if you open a box of old RCA cables) * The clothes were somewhat stiff. I remember enjoying "breaking the stiffness" off of them by shaking them around :D

Definitely. It affects then entire experience to such an extent that you want to go to bed early in order to lie between freshly dried sheets.

As soon as the weather got nice out (from Chicago), my grandmother would immediately start drying clothes outside.

I have done line drying and it ended up smelling not so great. Like someone who went outside on a hot day. I wonder if you need a low humidity environment for line drying to “work”.

You need sun the most. In most of the northern hemisphere it will only be viable for a couple months in the summer.

I live just outside London and manage to line dry laundry for about 6 months a year (April to Octoberish).

Save energy, smells better, and sunlight seems to result in better stain removal/whiter whites.

It's a bit marginal in Apr and Oct but I line dry close to 100% of washes May to Sept. Even most days in winter if it's sunny it works pretty well.

> In most of the northern hemisphere it will only be viable for a couple months in the summer.

This is not correct. I've done line drying year-round, doesn't work great when it's below zero (freezes) but otherwise works fine. I think low relative humidity is important so the moisture in the clothing has somewhere to go.

This has been my experience too. It’s humid all year where I live, my clothes either 1)do not get dry or 2) spend so much time wet that a musty smell develops.

It works in low humidity, but it doesn’t result in the same pleasant smell, as the paper explains.

For those downvoting me, you’d do good to read the paper which is the subject of this discussion.

It clearly states that UV/sunlight exposure is crucial for the pleasant “dried linen” smell, and half of the northern hemisphere does not receive enough UV during winter (check any UV/vitamin D map).

Personal anecdotes notwithstanding; I’m not saying clothes won’t dry in the winter, you just won’t get the same results.

The Amish and many Mennonite communities in the US dry clothes outside all year. It's quite amusing to see their frozen sheets on lines if you take the train between Philadelphia and Harrisburg and further west to Pittsburgh.

My sister in law doesn't own a dryer, and lives in New Hampshire. You can line dry all year long, at least at her lattitude.

I personally can't stand the smell of line-dried laundry. It's not worth changing your habits to reproduce it.

A frost would sometimes freeze the clothes stiff overnight. And dumb kid curiosity, if you licked the clothes you would get a faint taste of detergent.

But the best small was fresh cut hay, sleeping on it in a barn

> But the best small was fresh cut hay, sleeping on it in a barn

I always wonder why nobody sells fragrances based on it. And also on freshly cut grass. Or the scent one has after spending a day on the beach.

https://www.perfume.com/demeter/demeter-fresh-hay/women-perf...

https://demeterfragrance.com/grass.html

I wonder if the taste of detergent was present on the surface due to some differential process occurring during freezing that concentrated the detergent in the outer layer of frozen water? Hmm... probably not, but see [1] for how zone refining is used to concentrate chemical solutions through freezing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_melting

I might be reading this incorrectly, but I always thought that the small came from the detergent having not been fully washed off the clothes. Which is why if you use too much detergent your clothes become stiff, due to the dried detergent.

Then again, clothes seem to smell vastly different when they dry quickly out in the open sun as opposed to when they dry slowly.

UV triggers the reaction. So, driers need a strong UV source. There are some small UV driers, and sterilizers. Full-sized clothes driers with a strong UV source, not yet.

A UV dryer? You must be dreaming. Besides that it would bleach the clothes (what may be beneficial to WHITE but ONLY to white clothes), I would be skeptical about aging of the fibres. UV light is a bitch.

But I have heard about Japanese laundry machines using ultrasonic sound.

Obviously a UV dryer wouldn't have higher UV flux than sunlight, if for no other reason than cost.

Regarding photobleaching, survey the rest of this thread of people complaining clothes dried on the line turning white and then crumbling to dust.

Not UV for the whole job, UV in addition to hot air and tumbling.

well, the sun tends to fuck up the clothes as well, and the sun definitely has UV.

Would it work if I installed a UV light in my dryer?

Good to see tax payer dollars are tackling the important questions.

Awesome research in an unexpected field! I fucking love science!

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. /s and !/s

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