In praise of the European drying rack (2017)
alittlelifeineurope.com
alittlelifeineurope.com
No thank you. Tumble dryer is where it is. And yes, on a nice summer day sure, I also hang my clothes in the garden - but for 95% of the year that's not really an option, and I don't want to wait days for my clothes to be dry and my house to have this specific smell that develops in high humidity.
Reasons why:
Smoke and ash in the air from bushfires/burn offs.
Free power from the sun (solar) and its just too damned hot to go outside.
Small items like socks and jocks are tedious to hang up and we can use the above reason to bang them in and get them done quickly.
Didn't get time due to work etc commitments and leaving them on the line in summer often means sun-bleached clothes.
(bonus reason) Wife is terrified of spiders, and I've been too lazy to clean them out of the clothesline area :-P
(Everything is eventually sold at lidl, nominally a food store, but also carries a revolving selection of inexpensive random stuff, from tools and hardware, to housewares and clothes, computer bits, sound level meters, and power washers. And arc welders, roughly every 6 months)
> Most significantly, I think, it means that we have been entirely able to get by without owning a car for the past three years.
This, in my opinion, is probably the most significant difference between living in the USA and Europe (the other two being medical care and, when relevant, higher education).
[0] https://alittlelifeineurope.com/2017/09/03/so-what-is-life-i...
I've had my eye on this sort of thing for a while: https://www.viatekproducts.com/products/nubreeze-electric-dr...
I guess I can see the appeal of soft fluffy towels, but I actually prefer mine stiff. I can't justify or explain it, but ... I do. Sheets as well .. thick linen sheets, air-dried so they're kinda hard ... mmmm.
I’ve heard that one can add white vinegar in the washing machine to soften the fabric, but so far I haven’t tried it.
You should try "spin wash cycle" for 10 mins after washing (not sure about the translation, essorage in French - dewatering).
So you have the best of both worlds: Your towels air dry quickly, and are fluffy, you use far less energy than drying machine, and your towels / clothes are preserved.
But I didn't have to get used to this, I just immediately preferred it.
On a side note: does USA really treat this as a novelty? Drying racks? European style windows?
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4kjsnp/european_win...
In other words 50 adult blue jeans would take roughly a 75 cubic foot dryer to dry effectively. Which probably exists in some industrial settings but I doubt you have that at home.
Having moved to the US recently though, I do miss integrated washer-dryers that I could set to complete by the time I woke up so I got to wake up to warm clothes for flights and meetings I was stressed about. They're totally absent in the US, and people who have used them give me weird anecdotes about how 'they don't dry clothes properly' or 'they don't let you go through as many clothes as fast' -- while the latter may be true, the washer-dryer means the entire process happens without you being there, like if you were asleep.
The drier was an absolute godsend with babies in the house. The rate at which we had to clean and dry baby clothes absolutely outstripped the clothes' ability to dry on a rack (and there's only so much of your life you'd want to devote to hanging up tiny socks, bibs etc...)
In December, many households in Sweden had electricity bills of 10000-15000 SEK, or more (~$1100-1600 or ~€900-1400).
Instead of trying to lower demand the focus should be on increasing supply and lowering prices.
Not exactly the smartest way to heat a house, still widely used here.
There can still be obstacles though. Quite a few houses here lack a distribution system for the radiators. Those radiators are directly connected to the electricity system. I.e. the house lacks a water-based heat circulation system (or similar). One could retrofit such a system, but then it’s about double the cost compared to only installing the geothermal pump. The background to this situation is partly that in the 70s, the government required houses to be built this way. Electricity was cheap back then, we had lots of nuclear and water-power and wanted to get away from oil.
Another thing to keep in mind that even a geothermal system requires some electricity to run – and they are not terribly effective when the weather is very cold outside.
You can't handwash dishes with less water, nor can you get the water hot enough to sanitize the dishes like a dishwasher can.
Drying machines are relegated to "emergencies" and to people who have too little time or are too lazy.
https://www.woodies.ie/multistage-4-arm-50m-rotary-clothesli...
For comparison though in the summer, drying a washer load takes around 2 hours during the day and maybe 4-5 during the night.
You don't need heating either. I dry my bedsheets in a room with clotheslines in the roof of my apartment building. That has like 5-10C right now and they dry just fine.
Also humid air is the least thing I'd worry about in Winter.
In warm countries, buildings tend to have far worse insulation than we have.
As someone who lives in northern Europe (Sweden), I rarely experience dampness in my home though.
Most of the world has clothes horses. They're a pretty common thing.
For example, take this sentence: "a recent study in the US indicated that Americans spend $9 billion dollars per year (!) on the electricity used to dry clothes."
Billions of dollars is bad(!), right?
But a quick division[1] with the population of the US shows that this is just $27.30 per capita per annum, or about $2 per week per household of 2 adults and 2 kids. Essentially nothing.
Mind you, I have the exact same model of drying rack that the author does and I use it regularly.
But is it necessarily better than an electric dryer?
No.
Racks have significant downsides:
- If the weather is too humid, the clothes won't dry fast enough and end up smelling of mildew. We then have to rewash them, which is wasteful and damages the clothes.
- Clothes dried on the track often end up stiff as cardboard or very wrinkled, and then need ironing, which also uses electricity. Clothes often come out of the dryer ready to wear, especially t-shirts. The heat and motion of the dryer fluffs them and removes wrinkles to a significant degree.
- Those racks tip over all too easily. We can't put it out on the balcony without propping it up with some chairs, the slightest breeze will knock it over. Once wet clothes hit the dirty outside floor, they have re-washed!
- They're a hazard to children. They not only fall over easily, but they tend to fold up in the process with enough force to break fingers or trap limbs. We're probably going to have to get rid of it entirely now that our little one is mobile.
Etc...
[1] Next time some political budget thing is announced on the news, pay careful attention to how they're describing the cost. Are they talking about the total dollars "over ten years" or the yearly cost per capita? Once you learn to notice this, you can mentally translate the former to "I want to make this cheap thing sound expensive." and the latter to "I want to make this expensive thing sound cheap."
If you have humidity in your home though, that can definitely make the rack ineffective.
The only thing I agree with is we need more of the "integrated" washer-driers, or an automatic way to transfer clothes from one to the other. I would pay good money to save myself the effort of bending and moving wet (heavy) cold clothes, and instead have the convenience of having everything ready when I wake up.
The absolute worst case of 1 button push is still worth the convenience of not having to move damp clothes.
- turn the rack so the garments are in line with the wind rather than against it
- tumble dryers are a danger to children/pets