The Dryer and I

I have a love/hate relationship with my dryer.  I know I am not alone.  This relationship has been building over the years, starting back before my first baby was born.  There was no dryer in our house at the time, just a clothesline, and not much of one at that.  Knowing that I would be using cloth diapers, I thought getting a dryer was a great idea.  Our housemate and my husband were against the idea, claiming that lots of mothers before me had done plenty of laundry without a dryer!  In fact, both of their mothers had hardly ever used a dryer, Nick's mother (of twins) actually didn't even have one.  While I admired her, I didn't think I was woman enough to go without. I argued that just because she didn't have a dryer doesn't mean she liked it!

  Eventually I won out, but not until we moved to a new farm, and set up together from scratch.  We found a used dryer at a yard sale for $15!  It worked perfectly well for many years.

     I do not like to use my dryer.  But then again I love to use my dryer.  It is like a guilty pleasure.  When I am short on time and long on laundry, in they go.  When it is wet and rainy for days, in they go.  I pull the warm clothes from the dryer and hold them to my face like I did when I was little, and as I've watched my children do.  It feels so good, and it was so simple to achieve.  But it comes with a price, and that warmth I feel always has a flash of regret attached. The dryer is second in energy consumption of household appliances only to the refrigerator.  A typical clothes dryer will use 400 watts/hour.  The average family will use up 1750 kWh per year on a dryer.  At our rates of 7.47 cents per kWh, that's right around $130 annually.
     For us it is not so much the budget, as the carbon emissions, and sheer waste of it.  Of course we are fortunate enough to live where we can have a clothesline.  I have about 60' of line out side.  In the house I use the old fashioned stand up drying racks.  You may not know what I mean, as they are fairly obsolete.  They fold accordion style vertically, and have tiers of horizontal dowels to hang clothes on.  We place these over our heat vents, and can manage to fit a fair amount of laundry on these racks.  We have two large ones, and a small one that can fit a small load.  I also have a hanging rack that folds out from the wall behind our wood cookstove.  We bought this last year for about $25 from an Amish store in the area. All these devices help us utilize the hot air that is already being created in our home.  I realize that not everyone can have a clothesline.  In fact many planned communities and cities have regulations against hanging clothes or clotheslines.  I suppose these are the same type of homeowner associations that won't allow you to grow vegetables either!  The ridiculousness of this is beyond me.   Is laundry all that offensive?  I am curious about this, and perhaps this winter I will find out more, see if there may be a change on the horizon...

For now we are without a dryer.  The yard sale find crapped out on me about 4 or 5 months ago, in the thick of produce season.  I'll be the first to admit to many moments of frustration at the time it takes to go through the line drying process.  Now that things have slowed down for me, I kind of like the work.  It can be mildly meditative, and my small girls can play in the yard while I work.  As for the inside rack drying, it is just an ebb and flow that fits into my daily chores as long as I am spending the day at home.

It seems like a small step, going dryerless.  Could be we won't replace it.  Could be I'll look back, think I was crazy and take a trip to Sears.  Could just be though, that I am woman enough!