I use a drying rack as well since I live in an apartment and my friends who know this say it is too much trouble. Frankly I prefer to save the money from the dryer and I am not taking the risk of someone taking my clothes and placing them on the laundry room table because they want to use the dryer.

I hang my shirts on hangers to dry and that way I skip a step too since they are already on the dryer.

@Pete – I use the park laundromat which is right next door. (The back of the building faces our space. This is how I can see the clothesline from our bedroom.)

‘The jury’s still out on this one but you
may want to use heated dry in order to
kill bacteria since the hot setting
on the clothes washer may not be enough.’

Sunlight and fresh air will kill the germs even better that the hot setting in a dryer in my opinion.

Would be better to use a anti bacterial in the washing water if really concerned about it.

One of the most common covenants in condominium and homeowner association rules is one which forbid outdoor clotheslines. Apparently people think they bring down property values, because they are associated with the lower class. I guess that’s why the bottom dropped out of the housing market during the past few years, right? Way too many outdoor clotheslines.

Maintaining clothes and laundry in a sterile state would require a truly heroic effort– beyond using a standard dryer. There really isn’t much point though, because you’re going to put the clothes on your skin, which is generally going to be carrying plenty of microbes around anyway. If, even hypothetically, you could clean yourself and your clothes of microbes, you’d repopulate yourself throughout the day anyway.

Oh, I know all about MRSA. I work in a microbiology lab.

It’s possible to get community-aquired MRSA from shared laundry or towels, but even that article you cited mentions skin-to-skin contact. For example, it’s commonly spread through a school’s wrestling team. You have warm, moist skin coming into contact with warm, moist skin.

And as for gyms, I can understand getting it from the equipment that someone else was sitting on and just wiped down with a towel that is probably damp from their sweat and whatever else. That’s disgusting, actually.
If I used a gym, I’d probably take antibacterial wipes and wipe off the seats and handlebars of the equipment.

But I think blaming laundry is a bit much. We actually had a hospital send us a bunch of their linens to culture for MRSA, and we got nothing. They wanted to blame the laundry, b/c they contracted with a prison to wash their linens, when the real culprit in a hospital setting is the staff not washing their hands in between patients.

An inanimate object can act as an intermediary, but you have a short window of time before the organism dies, b/c it’s dried out and not getting any nutrients. So, a gym is a good place for that, b/c someone sweated all over the seat and then someone else sits down while it’s still damp. And people are clothed less in a gym setting, so more parts of your body get exposed.

I see a lot of cultures of MRSA at work, and I don’t wear gloves, and sometimes I get it on my hands if I drop a plate or drop the lid and my finger touches the media. In that case, I go to the sink and wash my hands. I’ve never gotten a MRSA infection.

I had a coworker, though, who got MRSA on her rear end and thighs, which she thinks was from a toilet seat while doing a triathalon. Not b/c public toilets are necessarily disease-ridden, but b/c she was in a situation where she was damp with sweat and after using the toilet, she continued to stay damp with sweat from riding her bike. In other words, if she wasn’t in a situation where her thighs were damp for an extended period of time, she probably wouldn’t have had a problem. Also, all the chafing from the bike riding probably enabled the bacteria to get penetrate through microscopic tears in her skin.

Just stay clean, stay dry, avoid getting other people’s fluids on you, and your laundry is probably the least of your worries, even if you line dry.

“I fish the clothes up and put it on my shoulder if it’s a shirt or a pair of pants or in my hand if its a small item. ”

I just had to laugh when I read this. I could never have imagined that there is a need to explain this sort of thing. As one of your readers already noted, it is still very common here in Europe to hang your clothes out to dry.

I btw just grab everything from the machine and throw it all on my laundry rack and then hang it all out to dry on the rack. So I just walk a single time 😉

Frugal in Europe, I actually did benefit from that description of throwing clothes over his shoulder. I (and my mom) have always dragged out the whole laundry basket and a basket of clothes pins and walked around scootching the laundry basket along the ground and the basket of pins along the line until everything is hung up.

My yard is way too windy (an my fences are too short) to not have clothes pins–I even use a clothes pin to keep hangers from flying off the lines.

But I can see that with a load of jeans or towels, it would be much easier to throw these over your shoulder. With a load of socks and underwear, not so much!

@Debbie M – For the small stuff, I put them on my hand instead of the shoulder. Then I just hold my hand up to the line and transfer with the free hand.

Debbie, maybe it’s ok to be inefficient if you like the exercise. I try to avoid forward bending because I have back problems–hence the non-bending. Also, my workload is low and my loads are small. I practically have to confiscate my husband’s clothing–underwear included or else he just keeps recycling/re-wearing. I re-wear too, but not to such an extreme! It sounds like you have more to wash. I don’t have to bend to use the lower racks or search for creative hanging places too often because I just don’t have high quantities.

Another benefit of drying clothes on the line is that the sunshine has a subtle bleaching effect which can minimize any minor stains that didn’t come out in the wash.

I hang up the big items outside but any “smalls” I sling over our banister inside.

If you’re in the USA, you can buy a countertop spinner that takes most of the water out of your clothes, so if you’re handwashing your clothes in a bucket, toss your clothes into the spinner and let it spin for about 2 minutes. It’s amazing how much water is taken out. Hang it on a rack and overnight your clothes should be dry.

How many times do you bend over once you count picking up your clothes from the ground? 😉

I, too, have washed in a bucket, but when I lived in a house, my most efficient laundry method was to rinse out the clothing I just took off in my bath water and hang them on the curtain rod.
Now that I, too, live in a travel trailer I use the machines (right across the way) and either use their outside line or, if no sun I hang up inside the trailer on hangers or a line I rigged. I have learned to open a vent or a window, even if it is cold, to let the moisture out. It also helps to move my small electric heater to be directly under anything like jeans or sweats that take a long time to dry.

I like to do squats and exaggerate the work of line-hanging. Lord knows I will never go to a gym.

The dryer wears out your clothes, shrinks them and a gas dryer sometimes makes them smell like gas. Washers are almost as bad – colors can bleed, or fade, buttons get torn off, etc. Detergent can shrink your woolens. I seldom use any soap at all. I am healthy, old, and unmedicated. I clean with vinegar and lemons. No shampoo. So far, so good.

Chuck – great idea. You could add a solar powered fan. We once had a solar wood kiln set up that way. It could be a dehydrated also.

I quit using standard towels and now use quick drying ones, more like kitchen towels. Much better. I can grip it and scrub hard to defoliate and get the blood moving.