Line drying gives your clothes that summer fresh smell—in the summer. What about in the winter? Do you brave the cold to hang your clothes in the winter sunshine? You can still dry your clothes outside in the winter if you keep in mind the factors involved in drying.
Line drying clothes saves money because it saves on the expense of energy use. Drying cloth diapers and other stained clothes outside, exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light, can reduce or remove stains. In the winter, you can still save energy and reduce stains.
The general opinion, based on answers to my casual questions to frugal and green friends, is that no one dries clothes outside in the winter. Oh, but they do! “They don’t dry,” several people said. Oh, but they do! “There isn’t enough sun,” said a couple. What? Oh, yes, there is! The suns rays don’t hide in the winter. I live where most of the winter we have biting cold, beautifully sunny days—when you can get a sunburn just as easily as you can in the summer. The misconceptions probably come from assumptions about heat, but heat is not the only factor in drying.
Why Do You Dry Clothes Outside?
Do you dry clothes outside to save money and energy, or do you use the sun for its natural bleaching effects? Your best winter options for clothes drying depend on your goals.
Just Dry, Please
If your only intention is to dry the clothes, you just need to create a situation that will evaporate moisture. Whether you can get that outside depends on your weather.
The factors in drying are heat, humidity, and time. With a lot of heat, you don’t need as much time, and humidity is less of an issue. Without heat, you need to increase the other factors. It will certainly take more time, and it helps if the humidity is low. Whichever factors you have in your favor, use them, but the moisture does need somewhere to go.
For soft clothes, you also need to add a fourth factor: agitation. Sheets and towels dried in a summer breeze aren’t just fresh because of the sun. The breeze flexes the fibers and softens them. When you dry clothes without any agitation or breeze, they are more stiff. If you get stiffness even in a breeze, you might have detergent residue in your clothes, in which case you need to rinse warmer, longer, or with more water. If you have no breeze, you can roll your clothes around or toss them in the dryer for a quick tumble to soften them up a bit.
If it’s humid and cold outside, your clothes might dry only very slowly or not at all. That would be an ideal situation to use an indoor drying rack to take advantage of the heat inside your house.
If it’s dry and cold outside, you might get freeze dried clothes. What you think is frozen might actually turn out to be mostly dry. If you get a coating of ice on the side away from the sun, turn the clothes around to encourage the ice to melt and evaporate. If your clothes freeze before they dry completely, you might need to finish the drying inside.
If it’s windy and cold, you might get freeze dried clothes that are frozen into interesting shapes. The wind, though, can help soften your clothes a bit as well as helping with evaporation. A dry breeze on a sunny day, even if it is cold, is idle winter line drying weather.
Keeping in mind heat, humidity, time, and agitation, you can get your clothes dry naturally even through a cold winter.
The Sun As Natural Bleach
If your reason for drying clothes outside is the natural bleaching effects of the sun, you can still dry clothes outside in the winter. Just plan wash day for a clear, sunny day.
The exposure to UV light reduces stains without the need to add extra chemicals. This is particular useful for cloth diapers. Spraying lemon juice on stains can help the sun bleach stains even more, though you will probably want to rewash the diapers to avoid irritating your baby’s skin with lemony diapers.
Obviously, if the sun isn’t shining directly on your clothes line, you won’t get that nice, natural bleaching effect. This goes for summer and winter. If you see the sun, though, you can still bleach your diapers outside in the winter.
If you decide to dry your clothes inside, putting them toward the sun will help if it is warmer (increasing the factor of heat), but keep in mind that many windows have UV filters. You might not get the bleaching effect of the sun even if you dry in indoor sunlight.
Keep in Mind
- When it’s really cold outside, use gloves to save yourself the pain of frozen fingers.
- If the temperature is below freezing, your clothes might freeze in the basket as you are putting up the other clothes. Help yourself move quickly by working in batches and putting clothes pins on the wet clothes before you go outside.
- Extreme cold can damage some materials. If you use reusable PUL cloth diaper covers, do not dry them outside in the winter. Extreme cold can crack PUL and other sensitive materials.
- If you have trouble with extreme dryness in your house, drying clothes on a line or a rack inside can add welcome humidity.
- If you decide to dry in a gas or electric dryer, you can still keep in mind the drying factors of heat, humidity, and time. You don’t need heat to dry. Many dryers have a setting for drying without heat; mine is “Air Dry.” Heat means you dry faster, but it isn’t necessary to evaporate moisture.
Don’t be afraid of those frozen jeans and mysteriously shaped, freeze dried sheets. You can still use the wind and the sun to dry your clothes outside in the winter. Good luck.
Image © Americanspirit | Dreamstime.com
Good tips. I still find it hard to line dry because we live in a built up area where there are woodfires at almost every house so our clothes stink! We have put up temporary lines under the veranda which helps a bit and a mini clothes line inside. We don’t own a drier but I don’t want one really so much better for the environment.
Thank you! I just moved in an apartment without dryer and there is no laundry place around… For the summer, I did not care, but in few months it will be winter…Now I know what to do.
I love this post. I am a lazy, middle aged man with a bad back who lives alone. Even with a clothes dryer, I would let the clothes sit in the dryer, twisted, and wrinkling. Then came the drudgery of un-twsting them and hanging them in the closet. Bad for my back when pulling them out of the dryer, and a symptom of my laziness for letting them sit, and Lord knows I don’t iron. I was a wrinkled mess.
I build scenery for community theater, and recently built a phone booth frame out of PVC pipe with cross bracing for support. Instead of tossing it in the trash after the run of the show, I brought it home as a backyard drying rack.
Voila, all problems solved! It is tall, and thus it’s easy on my back. I merely take the clothes from the washer, and hang them still damp on clothes hangers, which I then hang on the upper and lower support tiers of the PVC frame! When they are dry, they are already on hangers and thus are ready to hang! And wrinkle free!
This is much more efficient for me personally and for my energy bill! What’s more, I can hang either eight bath towels, or twenty shirts and/or pants on hangers, or four towels on the lower braces and ten shirts and pants on the upper. A movable smaller-diameter cross dowel can be laid across the middle supports, to which I can clip small towels and socks, or thread the rod through my underwear shish-kabob-like, sans clothespins! No wind worries!
In the winter, the PVC frame is so light, I bring it into an extra room, close the door, and let the central heating do double duty as a dryer. I LOVE IT! The old-time way of clothes drying is far more efficient than a dryer, by far.
Thank you for these tips. I have to wash everything except blankets in the sink. No dryer now since it broke. The landlord will not allow clothes lines either. So, I drape hand washed clothes over a chair on the porch and hang a couple of other things on the chair. In very cold, humid conditions, I may hang them on the rod in the shower! Thanks again!!
I dry my clothes outside for the breeze, not the sun or heat. I read that the Amish dip the clothespins in salt water to prevent them from freezing to the clothes/clothesline. I may try this if there is a nice breeze and above freezing. I normally hang my wet clothes on hangers and use the shower rod to hang and also my drying rack in the winter. I do toss the jeans and sheets in the dryer
I’m so glad you are encouraging people to air dry instead of wasting electricity on a dryer when it isn’t necessary. I really feel bad for people who are unable to utilize a clothesline because of their location. I have a dryer, but have never used it. At the moment it is unplugged in the garage. I have four boys who are now grown and still living at home and in all that time, NO DRYER! I use my lines in combination with hangers near my boiler in the cellar. All the cellar clothes dry overnight, and while they don’t have that fresh air smell, I still appreciate the cost effectiveness. Today is in the 20′s but sunny and all my clothes are going on the lines. What don’t dry today, will surely dry tomorrow!
My dark clothes hung up in the house immediately turned sour..
and I thought, there is a reason for winter whites,
washing clothes in the winter during a rain storm
and hanging the clothes up in the house
sometimes do not dry for days,
,so I just use white clothes and bleach them
and they don’t sour, in fact they can be drying for a week and still smell fresh as they came out of the washer.
Hanging clothes up on hangers on a chain keeps them evenly spaced,
I used the chain for the hanging lamp to hang up clothes to dry on hangers,
I’ve used a space heater in a closet and hung up wet clothes on hangers in the closet,
I hung underwear over the hanger
and sock i cloth pin them to the hanger, when i had little money I would go to the laundry mat and put all my whites in one large washer it costs about 3.00 at the time and bring them home to dry, the sheets i hung up over the doors, along with the blankets.
putting nails near the ceiling I would hang them near where the heat would rise,
i want to make a green house porch/hot house to hang clothes on to keep them from the rain, i also put my clothes in a hot car, and they got as hot as a dryer.
Thanks for the tips. Drying time depends on climate. When I lived in a humid area, I needed to put clothes in the sun (near a window) or near a heater. Now that I’m in the desert, no sun or heat needed since the dry air sucks the moisture out of everything—not just clothes but skin. Another thing to try for those who have in-floor heating vents is an indoor dryer box that fits over the vent.
I dry my clothes outside all year long. I live on the beach in Connecticut. We get beautiful breezes and the clothes smell wonderful! I found that I have to take in the clothes by the time it gets dark or the dry clothes become wet again!
Thank you for this information. I’m without a washer and dryer right now and have been hand washing with a Mobilewasher and hanging them out on the line. These last two months have really been an education for me, hanging out for the first time, starting in winter. As much of a struggle as it is, there is an intense satisfaction that comes with “making do”.