Deb, my mom used to line dry our clothes for 6 years prior to buying her first washing machine in 1986. There was no such thing as a “dryer” and trust me, there was no bird poop on any of the clothes. The one bad thing is that in the winter we had to dry clothes indoors and that took a lot of space.

Hey Deb, I’m with you on this. Since Isa was born, I have the washer on it seems constantly. I wash with a biodegradable, laundery detergent, try to wash only when washer is full, and I only use cold water. No bleach of course. Clean the lint filter every single time you dry, and you use less energy with each load. Having energy eff. units is huge, they use up to 1/3 the amount of water and energy than the less efficient, older versions. You can’t be perfect Mama, but it looks as though you’re doing pretty darn well.

OMG – you aren’t allowed to have clotheslines? That’s terrible for the environment. Do a post just about that!

I’m in Australia and never heard of such a thing here.

We line dry too – and have a dryer and hanger for winter. No poop on the clothes – only about once or twice only, ever.

Charndra

Good post–it’s so true that the little things really are the ones that matter. You have to be honest about the changes you can make and do the best you can. I think as long as you are moving in a particular direction, you are doing well. Life takes its own time! You can’t push a river! I love air drying our laundry because it smells so good (and no bird poop yet) and is better for everything but I do a lot of laundry and don’t have an energy efficient washing machine. Like I say, you just do the best you can!

I have been drying my family’s clothes on the line for years and we’ve only had bird poop hit it once. But I have to admit, when it happened, it was HUGE…and extremely inconvenient. Those darned birds hit my daughter’s comforter, and it was a real hassle to run it back through the wash again at bedtime! Kudos on the reusable training pants and rags!!

[...] Laundry: Deborah from Pure Mothers [...]

I’m OCD about laundry! I grew up with a clean freak nurse mom so I know all about the germs in our clothes so I do a TON of laundry. And I also don’t have a clothes line because we both have really bad allergies.

MY HOA won’t allow clotheslines either. During the winter I put our wet clothes on plastic hangers and hang them to dry on the shower curtain rod. My family has seasonal allergies too (even the dog!) I only line dry during the winter to add humidity to the house. During the summer it’s the dryer all the way.

I only recently heard of home owner associations …what else don’t they allow?

my laundry policy is that if it’s a full load then go for it …with it being just my daughter and I we get by with laundry every other week – all we did was make sure we had 14 pairs of underware!!

With her going off to college I might have to buy more underware!

RE: Bird poop
Yep, that happened to us, twice. Our clothes line is under a big tree though, so it’s way more likely.

RE: Laundry too often
I have a drawer in my dresser specifically for clothes I’ve worn once or twice but still consider clean. An improvement over my old method of leaving them on the floor. Wearing things a few times cuts way down on the number of loads.

Don’t give up yet on air drying your laundry! There are ways around those pesky HOA rules…
Big savings can be had with the right combination on laundry equipment. Those new front-load washers not only use less water, but they do not need hot water AND they spin the clothes out so fast that they come out almost dry.
Then just take those ‘almost dry’ clothes and hang them up on a clothes drying rack indoor or out (depending on the season and your HOA).
Clean dry laundry with very little water usage and great savings!

HA! I used to have a blog called greenmommychat, and one of my first posts was about line drying, and how being from LA it was something I only associated with poor tenament housing and farms. I was so worried that my neighbors would think I was slumming up the neighborhood because I lived in a country-ish area that had no fences between houses and our knickers were hung out for the whole world to see.

It turns out there are many reasons I love line drying, and many reasons I don’t. Now that I am living in a very rainy London with no option but to line dry, I know how nice it is to have the option! I will probably always default to the line when it is practical and convenient, and curse like crazy when it is not and my entire house is covered in radiator-drying laundry from my family of 6! Options are good, and being congnizant of our choices is even better!

Wow! Look at this article I just read. It is just as I feared…..people are more concerned about how their neighborhood looks than the environment or allowing families to save money.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091118/us_nm/us_usa_laundry