Unconventional Line Drying

Today was laundry day in the Ballast household!  As I was getting ready to load the washed clothes into the dryer, I paused and wondered how sunny it was outside.  Well…today was one fine sunny day.

I am not an environmentalist junkie; however, I am all for saving money where possible.

A month ago, Paul and I were visiting with a friend at her house when the subject of line drying and laundry came up.  Apparently, summer time is when most households in their neighborhood pay up to $300 in electricty!  I believe it!  Air conditioning a house is a huge expense in the Summer.  Add to that the use of the dryer for every load of laundry and anything else that plugs into electrical outlets and you have yourself a hefty electric bill at the end of the month.

My friend went on to say that to help keep the electric cost a little lower than most, she uses a good old line dryer in her backyard.  She showed the contraption that she uses and it sure is a good sized one.

I don’t have one like it because it would cost money to purchase one.  But, Steve and I, just today, have come up with a plan to “create” a “collapsible” kind of line dry in our deck.  See, there is a line in our homeowners’ association that says, in effect, that line drying is not allowed.  But my common sense tells me to use the sun’s power to dry clothes!  I always thought, since moving down here, that Knoxville sun is strong, man.  It burns!  It’s such a waste (and a shame) to not use it.

Well, since we don’t have the line dry plan in place yet, I got a little creative in the meantime and came up with this today (I’ve actually been doing this all week already but just to show you my creative genius, ha!):

towels on a laundry basket and on a picnic chair

some more towels hanging over another picnic chair

the inside of our utility room on laundry day

trusty handy clothespins

My towels dried in no time!  Seriously, this week I did not have to use the dryer for four loads of laundry.  Each time I went out to collect my sun-dried laundry, I felt all happy inside.  Ya, I’m not that hard to please!  I can’t wait to show you our soon-to-be-in-place Ballast line dry.  And I do hope we won’t get in trouble for trying to use the free energy of the sun to dry our laundry!

How about you…do you use a line dry?  How long?  Tell me about your ways of saving electricity.  Drop a comment in the comment section.