Dry your clothes on the line or in the rack. Then put them in the dryer just long enough to freshen and soften them. Use a dryer sheet (IE Bounce) if you must. Should only take 5 or 10 minutes!

How do you keep track of how many days you’ve worn something. I assume you’d rotate (not wearing the same thing all in a row), but how do you distinguish 3 uses from 4?
–
Baz L

I’m baffled.

I dry my clothes on clothes racks inside. It does take a long time, especially in the winter, so I can do only one load of laundry a day (unless I pull out an extra drying rack and put it someplace in the way!).

You can also dry clothes by hanging them up spaced out on a clothes rod. Some people have these in their laundry rooms or can easily install one. If you dry shirts on hangers, then they are ready to put away as soon as they are dry.

Having a ceiling fan on full blast all day is a really big help, and flipping the clothes over after 12 hours to expose the other side also helps.

Having the drying rack near plants makes the humidity a good thing! Also, it’s a free humidifyer in winter or when you have a cold! Just don’t leave the racks too close to a wall or you can get mildew.

Unlike normal people, I really don’t like the smell of laundry that has dried outside, although it’s wonderfully fast, especially on a sunny, breezy day when no bird poops on them. A load of thin clothes can be dry by the time the next load is washed!

But to me, clothes dried outside smell like wet dogs. Maybe I should learn to love the smell of wet dogs?

I’m afraid I fantasize about the day when I can have a dryer (I have a washer connection in the kitchen and no dryer connections, so this would require remodeling). But I think I’ll still only dry jeans and towels in the dryer, and maybe not even until they’re bone dry. Things with elastic definitely last much, much longer when you never put them in a dryer.

Also, I have tried washing stuff in a sink and hanging it to dry while traveling, but I hate that. I am not strong enough to wring them as dry as my washer does, even when I do that trick where you roll them in a dry towel and then wring the water into a towel. And most hotels don’t have ceiling fans, so things seem to never, ever dry. And so you have to wear them very damp and hope they dry off before they chafe you.

I am whole-heartedly with you on the part about not washing clothes so often, though. Most of my clothes are cashmeres and silks and I wouldn’t want to wash them all the time, anyway. I wash most pieces of clothing once a month, which is about 4-7 wears per piece before washing.

One thing I suspect is that visible clotheslines might even be against zoning laws or at activate the more uptight members of the home owners association. Anyone know whether that is the case?

Oh, and DW suffered a bit of my enthusiasm of line dried clothes when I thrust it into her face and said “Smeeeell”. I watch too much Futurama

When on vacation I always wash my clothes in the sink and then line-dry them within my room (I bring sink stopper and portable clothesline). That way I only need to take 1-2 days of clothes so I can travel very light. Not only are washing services expensive, but they also take time.

In a period of extreme frugality about 2.5 years ago I line-dried my clothes at home, and even washed them in my kitchen sink. Didn’t work out really well for me, they take forever to dry. I doubt I would do it at home again, but I will always do it while traveling.