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Comment by lukevp | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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