Thursday, April 4, 2013

All about laundry.....

In the May/June issue of Hobby Farm's Home they have a infographic on line drying best practices.  If you click on this link, you can see if more easily and you can download and print it as it is a pdf file.
 
I finally got my first load of laundry line dried last Friday (Good Friday).  Hoping it will warm up and I can hang more laundry out.  Do you line dry you laundry?

The majority of my clothes pegs/pins are wooden like this:

I don't have any like this:
But do have some plastic ones similar to these:

I made my peg bag out of some material I had and a child's coat hanger.  I found a pattern here that uses a tea towel, that is similar.  Though the more hard wearing the material the longer it will last.

I still make my own fabric softener using this recipe (actually generally the third one, and I add drops of lemon essential oil as well).  I don't make my own laundry detergent as I try and buy it super cheap when on sale and with coupons, but have used home made laundry detergent in the past with great success, and there is a recipe here.

I tend to "do" around five to six loads of laundry a week.  Two loads of whites and three to four loads of darks.  There are two of us in the house, and sometimes it can be more sometimes less.  I rarely use the electric dryer.  It's either hung to dry on the clothes horse/airer, or hung outside to dry.  Dh complains about how crispy the towels get.  I just tell him it's a bonus as they exfoliate his skin at the same time and people pay thousands to have that done and he gets it done for free!!

14 comments:

bonsaimum said...

I line dry most of the year except for the winter months. Clothes dryers cost too much to run if used all the time. :)

Evelyn said...

i love to line dry, my dryer broke last summer and I haven't fixed it yet. I dry on hangers in the winter. My problem is there is still snow under the line so hard to get at. I do about ten loads a week, three of us plus my other son on weekends.

Evelyn said...

i love to line dry, my dryer broke last summer and I haven't fixed it yet. I dry on hangers in the winter. My problem is there is still snow under the line so hard to get at. I do about ten loads a week, three of us plus my other son on weekends.

Evelyn said...

i also use the normal wooden pegs but keep losing them in the grass, good thing they are cheap!

Cindy@NorthofWiarton said...

I am pretty much along the same lines of how I do laundry as you, Gill. The towels I find if I use less detergent are not so stiff as when I used more. Was tempting to hang mine out Friday but had been too busy otherwise. Looking forward to hanging out the bedding, hopefully soon.

Debby said...

I like to line dry most everything except towels. I agree with your hubby they are just too stiff to dry off with when they hang to dry

Jane and Chris said...

Just put out some laundry in -10C... it'll be 8C by this afternoon and the clothes will smell lovely!
Jane x

onesimplefarmgirl2 said...

I don't own a drier. In the winter on a rack by the cook stove in the spring to fall outside. I use wooden pegs from Home Hardware. The Dollar store pegs break too easily. I buy and make my detergent. I do one load every night and all the barn clothes and sheets on the weekends when hydro is at its lowest.

Rose said...

I have been hanging clothes on the line for a week or two...not all but at least have been able to hang a few loads out. I love towels hung on the line...don't like fabric softener in them. Have got to check out your softener recipe cause I do use it in some of my clothes.

Also, I use both plastic and wooden pinch clothespins...

If I can hang clothes out, I somehow feel all is right with the world.

Unknown said...

I can't wait for the weather to improve so I can dry my washing outside on my line.

Nothing like it.

Sft x

angela said...

I line dry all the time and if the weather isnt right I dry on clothes horses in the sewing room. I gave away my dryer years ago because I just could not afford to use it. and it ruined all the clothes, they never lasted as long. Nothing nices than sun and wind dried clothes.

Cash Only Living said...

I really should make more effort o line dry my clothes but I tried it a few times, even with fabric softener, and they came out crunchy. Not sure what I was doing wrong but that would be a good place to save money on machine drying costs.

Aodhnait said...

I dry on a clothes rack that I can move in and out of the house (and take in quickly when it rains)

My husband, the architect, won't allow a clothes line as it will ruin the aesthetics in the back courtyard!!!!

We have no drier.

Scarlet said...

We've had fabulous line drying weather for the last week. It's been sunny and windy but still quite cold (we have a thick frost again this morning). I don't have a drier, so it's either outside on the line or on racks inside.

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