Everyone has to do laundry. Everyone can save money while doing their laundry. This go green tip will teach you how to save money while drying your clothes. The average family will spend $156/year drying clothes in their homes, around $390 if you go to a laundry mat! Continue reading this go green article to learn how can you save this money and help save the environment by using less electricity or use less gas!
How Much Does it Cost to Dry a Load of Clothes
Drying clothes cost around $0.50/load of laundry done in an electric dryer or around $0.45/load of laundry to dry in a gas clothes dryer. The gas dryer costs around $0.04/load for electricity and $0.41/load for the gas. The average family will do around 6 loads of laundry a week, which is 312 loads of laundry a year! So if you are using an electric clothes dryer you will spend around $156/year just by drying your clothes. If you are using a gas clothes dryer, you will spend around $140.40/year to dry your clothes!
How Can I Dry Clothes Without Using a Clothes Dryer
Yes, you can dry your laundry without having a clothes dryer, or even if you have a clothes dryer you can use these methods to save money. Simple, you can hang your clothes on a clothesline to dry. You can hang your clothes on a clothes drying rack, indoor clothesline, outdoor clothesline, etc. Just hang your clothes somewhere dry, and your clothes will dry. Hanging clothes to dry will save you around $156/year. Plus, if you don’t already have a clothes dryer, you will save more money by not buying a clothes dryer!
If you want to hang your clothes indoors, you can simply get a clothesline and run it across your basement. I’d recommend using a clothes drying rack and a clothesline. I like clothes drying racks slightly more because they are not in the way. You can place clothes drying racks off to the side somewhere and you don’t have to duck every time you walk around in your basement! You will still want to use a clothes line for some of your larger loads or even larger laundry, like sheets, blankets, etc.
Hanging your clothes on an outdoors clothes line will usually dry your clothes faster as the heat from the sun will dry them. Some people worry about clothes fading as they are in the sun. I really haven’t had a problem with that, but I don’t leave my clothes out all day. I usually only set them out to get them partially dry, then bring them indoors to finish drying.
Another way to dry your clothes even faster is to use a clothes spinner or a clothes wringer first before hanging them to dry or if you are still wanting to use an electric clothes dryer, spinning or wringing your clothes out first will save you money, but not as mush as just hang drying your clothes.
A clothes spin dryer is kind of like the last cycle on your washer, it spins clothes really fast using centrifugal force to force the water out of the clothes. A clothes spinner will get clothes dryer than the spin cycle on your washer. The clothes wringer squeezes the water out of the clothes.
I think the clothes wringer is more efficient than the clothes spinner. The clothes spinner is a little faster, and also uses less effort from you. A clothes wringer still requires you to feed each article of clothing into the wringer, even if you get an electric clothes wringer, you will still have to feed the clothes into the clothes wringer, but you won’t have to hand crank the clothes through the wringer. I recommend thinking of it like this, if you get a hand crank clothes wringer, you get to do laundry, save money, and get a slight exercise all at the same time!
You may also wat to read my go green tip: Save Money Doing Laundry Washing Clothes
February 1st, 2012 at 5:41 PM
Great ideas. I don’t actually hang dry clothes due the the amount of time it requires. My friend and I started a laundry service from our homes a few years ago. We found a little tip that we use on every load now. White vinegar. Add 3/4 cup into the rinse cycle and it acts as a natural fabric softner, saves money, is eco-friendly and helps keep your washing machine clean.
Boston Laundry Care
February 1st, 2012 at 8:04 PM
Amanda,
Thanks for the tip, I will be doing a section on the site soon about natural cleaning products and I will include this tip. I hope you didn’t write this comment solely to spam your laundry care site.
February 2nd, 2012 at 5:31 PM
Thank you for posting. I was not commenting solely to spam my laundry site but appreciate that you left it in for me. We are always researching the internet on way to save money on laundry and be eco-friendly. I’ll keep my eye on your site for the upcoming cleaning products. Thanks again!
February 2nd, 2012 at 9:23 PM
Amanda,
Great, glad to hear it. I’ve been researching and testing different natural cleaning products to see what works best for cleaning different things in your home. My girlfriend is also very into natural products and has been making her own cleaning supplies and testing new ones. Some work great others just work. I don’t think she has done the white vinegar trick in laundry, but I will definitely tell her about it. I know we do use vinegar for a lot of cleaning, especially mixing water and vinegar and using it to clean windows, glass table top, and also my cars windows.