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henrikschroder

> and 50% had to line-dry clothes.

Sorry for hijacking, but this is quite possibly one of the funniest American poverty markers around.

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Seriously!

Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.

When one lives in a tiny apartment with no balcony, you better have a dryer. When living with plenty of land, it's not a problem to hang clothes to dry in the sun.

> Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.

My euro family disagrees, even in places that don’t have a balcony. Get the rack out and dry indoors and it’s pretty dry overnight (in the not so humid places).

I have a dryer but avoid it for most clothes because I think it wears them out.

A lot of rent agreements in then UK explicitly forbid tenants from drying clothes indoors on a rack because it is claimed that it raises humidity and the risk of mould (being an already quite damp, cold country)

That's because UK rental homes for the hoi polloi are notoriously badly insulated, ventilated, and heated. The landlords are blaming the tenants for the landlords' failings.

Plenty of old photos of people running drying lines between them and the opposite tenement building. Not saying people should do that today, just that it's what people did when they had neither space nor means to buy a dryer (or before dryers were invented)

Many Americans would love to do this today, but every apartment I've rented in the last 15 years has strict rules against drying clothes outside along with other restrictions on what you're allowed to place or store on patios and balconies there. Most of the rules seem to be in place purely so that the complex/tower doesn't look "poor" or "trashy"

It's pretty much only Americans who think clothes on clothes lines makes a place look "poor".

Consumerism demands that everyone buys a tumble dryer, therefore not having a tumble dryer means you're a povvo!

Meanwhile, in civilisation, I have a washer, a dryer, and a collapsible wall-mounted clothesline in my apartment, and I can choose which piece of clothing goes where to dry depending on need!

Where is this sun in November?

You have indoor heating, right? Clothes dry just fine on a rack indoors (albeit you may need some way to remove the resulting humidity if your heating system isn't doing that job already)

Australia

We don’t have time to hang our clothes out on the line and bring them in again and iron them. We’re too busy working. sobs

Washing dishes and hanging clothes out aren’t actually torture.

One of the most indulgent approaches when money is no object, is to have enough luxurious time to be able to fix your own food, do your own dishes, and wash your own laundry.

I don't like using a dryer even when I had one. Its way too taxing on the fabrics.

Its nice to have as a last resort or during winter tho.

Very true statement; but, it’s certainly neither convenient nor the least bit enjoyable, either.

I've been handwashing my dishes for a long time and now have a dishwasher. One of the main benefits is having a place to store the dirty dishes until there are enough to make it worth washing. I used to do 3 washes a day, with 2 tiny ones.

I quite like hanging out the clothes to dry - bit of sunshine and birdsong, something to do with my hands while my brain plots and schemes.

We bought a dishwasher about 5 years ago. Still haven't used it. True story.

Couldn't afford to throw enormous amounts of heat out the window during winter time! And all the time.

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