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| Using the Washer & Dryer Less |
Submitted by:
anonymous 06/07/2009 8:49 AM
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Many of these tips are obvious, yet I can't get my teenagers to do them, so I figure many people also don't do them. However with some vigilance, you can significantly reduce your use of these two appliances.
Using Your Washer Less:
The main way to use the washer less is to wash clothes less frequently. Here are some tips:
1. Try to get more than one day out of a pair of pants, as well as articles of clothing not worn next to the skin (such as sweat shirt worn over T-shirt). If it passes the sniff test, wear it again, especially around home. I can't get the kids to do this, but my husband and I do.
2. Don't wash an article of clothing if it clean except for one or two spots. Spot wash with a damp cloth. Recently I got a fruit stain on a pair of slacks I had been wearing for an hour, and had to immediately wash out the stain with hot water. But then I hung the pants on the line instead of putting them in the wash.
3. Wear an apron when preparing food (aforementioned fruit stain hit below the apron).
4. Change into you "grubby clothes" when doing dirty tasks. We have hooks in our bedroom, and these often have several pairs of pants and shirts that we change in and out of during the day. My husband has garden clothes, around-the-house clothes, and dressier clothes to wear at his job.
5. Wash with full loads. It is generally not necessary to wash whites and colors separately, as long as the colored clothes have been washed several times before. If you have one critical item that needs to be washed (such as a sports uniform) wash it by hand.
6. To keep bed sheets cleaner longer, shower before going to bed, instead of when you get up in the morning.
Using Your Dryer Less:
If you think about it, it's weird that we have a machine that does something that happens all by itself if you just wait. Here are some ways to reduce dryer use.
1. Wash clothes less frequently. (See above strategies.)
2. Obviously, hang dry clothing. It is even possible to hang dry clothing indoors during the winter. We use clothing racks for smaller items. We also have coat hooks over a forced-hot-air vent, and that will dry even jeans overnight. I also put shirts on hangers, and hang them on those over-the-door clothes-hanger things, leaving enough air space for clothes to dry. Clothes will air-dry even if not near to a heat source, especially if the air is dry... it just takes a little longer. By the way, all of our clothing racks were acquired through curbside shipping. If you don't have racks, be creative in finding ways to hang things.
3. Some people use the dryer to de-lint clothing. I find as long as I avoid putting fuzzy whites items with darks likely to pick up lint (such as T-shirts), there is no lint problem.
4. Some people use a dryer to reduce wrinkles. If you give clothes a good snap before hanging, that removes most wrinkles. This is good enough for everyday clothes, with some touch ups with an iron as needed. However, if you want to avoid ironing altogether, you can run items in the dryer for about ten minutes to remove wrinkles, then remove and hang dry them. I do this for my husband's dressier work clothes.
5. Keep a mesh bag in your laundry room for articles of clothing family members want to run through the dryer. I insist they take the initiative for putting those items in the bag... otherwise the items get air-dried. We accumulate enough in the mesh bag to do one dryer load a week.
6. If you air-dry indoors, collect up laundry and wash as soon as you have enough for a washer load... we do a load every day. This helps us avoid getting backed up with the limited space we have for air drying. Also make sure kids put their dirty clothes in a common basket daily. Sometimes they will save up several days worth of clothes, then have nothing clean and dry to wear, and then insist they need to run a small washer/dryer load. I've caught them doing loads of just a couple items at a time.
7. Have family members pick out their clothes they plan to wear the night before, so be sure items they want to wear are dried. When they don't plan the night before, they tell me they must finish drying damp clothes in the clothes dryer before going to school. Instead they could have moved that critical item to a space over a heating duct, for overnight drying.
8. If you spot wash an item you need to wear immediately, use your hair dryer to spot dry it.
9. Have one family member be responsible for washing and drying clothing. In our home, it has been the custom for family members to rotate chores, but the reality is that I am the only person in the house that really manages the laundry well. Kids will mix white fuzzies with dark, then complain when their dark T-shirts are linty. If just a few articles of clothing on the line are still damp, they will insist they must use the dryer. They will run a washer load, then forget to hang the laundry, so that we get backed up with stuff to air dry. And so on. I gave up, and now just do the laundry myself and have kids do other chores.
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