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Why don't people use clothes lines anymore?


monsoon

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The solar powered clothes dryer, aka the clothes line, used to be quite common, but you hardly see them anymore. They would represent a huge savings in energy usage and preventing greenhouse gas generation if people started to use them again. So what happened? Why don't people use clothes lines now?

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To me this is like asking why we don't see rotary phones anymore. Some things are just better.

My 1950s house in Anaheim had a clothes line, and I never used it. (Had it removed, in fact, before selling to the next owner... to make the yard look nicer.)

It's a lot faster to throw clothes in a dryer and come back an hour later and grab them out, and then put them on hangars.

Clothes pins also cause some fabric to stetch when it's hanging on a line.

Plus if you forget your clothes, and leave them out all night, they get damp again from the morning dew. They'll stay dry in the drum of a dryer, if you forget to remove them.

And they don't dry as evenly on the line. Water seems to work it's way to the bottom corners of things.

I know there's a minimalist/conservationist argument here. But there are plenty of other ways to save energy. A huge one would be to build more naturally ventilated buildings and use less A/C.

PS: For you young'uns... A "rotary phone" has holes in a dial, that you stick your fingers in and turn. :rolleyes:

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Yeah, I'm dryer guy here, but as you know Metro, still hugely common in Japan. Yes, in what is arguably the most technologically advanced nation in the world, clothes dryers though not unheard of, are relatively uncommon in a typical home. "Huge" market for laundry poles and assorted hanging hardware!! :lol:

The one thing I dislike about hanging is that clothes seem to take on the scent of the environment or pick up "dust", smell smokey, etc. There is the wet/cold problem in winter months or foul weather too.....

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Ah, good point. Never even thought of that. Still, a lot of folks have the opportunity to do so, but don't. Personally, I'm lazy. It is something I could do, but the dryer is just too convenient. And then I plea the excuses, too damn busy, dryer saves time (because then I can'tplant my rear in front of the TV instead while the dryer does all the work!), etc., etc. :(

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I think clotheslines don't fit the lifestyles of modern day households where all adults work outside the house. Also, the sun tends to depreciate the clothing more quickly, which would not be cost or environmentally efficient.

I think, as george said, that most suburban neighborhoods forbid them, and urban neighborhoods tend to not have enough space. Other urban neighborhoods might actually have a risk of theft.

In general, though, even though we don't hang it up outside, we probably hang up half of our clothes inside our house. I usually don't put anything of my wife's in the dryer as I have shrunken so many pieces of her clothing by mistake. I also bought a washer that uses less water, and spins much of that water out, so it doesn't take too much to dry, either by hanging inside or by using the dryer.

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Yeah, I'm dryer guy here, but as you know Metro, still hugely common in Japan. Yes, in what is arguably the most technologically advanced nation in the world, clothes dryers though not unheard of, are relatively uncommon in a typical home. "Huge" market for laundry poles and assorted hanging hardware!!
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We do hang a lot of clothes to dry inside, and then just toss them in the dryer with a damp cloth to soften them up and get any wrinkles out when we're ready to wear them. In fact, we're in the middle of remodeling our laundry room, and have made it a point included plenty of spots to hang-dry items (we're also ordering a new high-efficiency washer this week).

But, much of the time, drying outside isn't practical, despite the green appeal.

My wife usually does the bulk of our laundry on weekends when I'm outside working in the yard, kicking up dust, dirt and grass. Not the best scenario for a clothesline. We frequently wash a load at night during the week. Drying it outside is out of the question in that case, too. My wife has a lot of allergies, so any day with any sort of pollen count is off limits. Cold and rainy days put a damper on things too.

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I grew up out in the country. We used the dryer for most clothes, but used the clothesline for bed clothes. We even had clotheslines in the basement so you could hang them on inclement days.

My wife and I have been debating a clothesline in the backyard. We both like the smell of clothes dried outside, and would like the lowered energy bills, but they look sorta trashy in the suburbs, and it does take a long time to dry things. Might look at putting one behind the house when/if we build a grage or carport on the back of the house.

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I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but I bought a steam washer, and you can actually get away with doing that for most lightly-used clothes to freshen them up. That saves a lot of water and drying energy. It kills germs, removes odors, and removes wrinkles. That is pretty much why we wash most of our clothes. It's not like getting done with a hard days' work in the mines or something.

Just food for thought. The only reason we need to dry the clothes is that we get them so wet to begin with.

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I used to air dry my clothes on a drying rack in college cause I hated paying the $2 to use a dryer. My biggest complaint was only that my clothes were stiff as hell after they dried.

Unfortunately, drying your clothes outside has now become one of those things associated with poor, uncivilized people. People see clothes hanging outside as a sign that a neighborhood is trashy. Ridiculous if you ask me.

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We hang our clothes on a line in the laundary room a lot. Usullay delcate things that i dont want to shrink; i wash it in the evening, hang it the line all night, then pop it in the dryer in the morning for a few minutes with some bounce to soften it and make it smell nice. I do that with my dress shirts usually.

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It's -7*F right now. Clothes lines are out of the question. We hang a lot of our clothes (that can't be dried in the dryer) above the drier so the excess heat that comes up off the back dries them faster. Nothing too fancy schmancy, but it's better than having damp clothes.

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What is interesting is that the UV light kills bacteria and thus it is much safer to use a clothes line. especially clothes washed in cold or luke warm temps. Perhaps some day someone will figure out how to dry clothes with a UV light inside the dryer as it spins and will not turn off when you close the door like the refrigerator? It would be a smart invention and cost next to nothing to include as a feature?
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I used a clothes line as a kid in our lawn to dry our bed sheets, and comforters, but people clothes went in the dryer. Our dryer had a history of "burning" our sheets and blankets, so we decided to hang dry them outside, and in the winter well you just had to deal with stinky bed sheets for a few months if something happened to them :lol:

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