[Greenbuilding] drying clothes

[Erin Rasmussen]

I do something like 8 - 12 loads of laundry per week,  but we have at least 4 people, and we need to wash linens fairly frequently. I have a wonderful  1950's era  laundry line posts, spread 20 or so feet apart, and I can manage 4 super loads of laundry at a time.

We also get a lot of rain, and some wind, so I double-pin everything, and when it's really rainy I use my dryer for to finish off the drying.  At first I had a hard time getting the rest of my family to switch over, but now they are all used to it. (If you hang the shirts and pants upside down, and use 2 pins at the bottom corners, there's often no need for an iron.) 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Reuben Deumling" [9watts at gmail.com]
Date: 08/27/2011 10:40 PM
To: "Green Building" <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] drying clothes

One trouble with going back to using a clothes line or drying rack I suspect is that the ubiquitous clothes dryer allowed (encouraged?) those who use one to become accustomed to doing more--much more--laundry than we/they used to. Im incredulous at the average figures the DOE puts out for how many loads of laundry people ostensibly do in this country. I think the number is 8 per week on average. With upwards of sixty percent of US households now one- and two-person affairs this seems nuts to me. 
But getting back to my point. If you really do eight loads a week, I could imagine the line or rack drying could become difficult to manage. My three-person household averages one load every ten days. Drying that on a rack isnt bad at all. 
So, how to dishabituate folks from doing so much laundry? Just think of all the benefits in time, energy, water, machine wear, etc. from doing 1/10th as much laundry as we apparently do now....