MNN - Mother Nature Network

In attempts to keep with my goals, I lined dried my clothes last weekend. The temperature started out around 20F and I think the high was no more than 34F. It was sunny so that my have helped. We live in KS where the sun shines most days. Of course that often means that as soon as the sun goes down the temperature drops significantly. Anyway, having 5 loads of laundry I was able to line dry two. Or at least mostly line dry two. Here is what I learned.

If line drying in winter hang clothes outside as early in the day as possible. This gives them the most daylight/sunlight as possible. The clothes I hung out around 10 in the morning were dry when I brought them in that night. But the clothes I hung out in the afternoon around 2pm were partly frozen when I brought them in. My conclusion is that they did not dry enough before the temperature dropped as the sun went down. However, even with the frozen clothes I limited the time they needed in the dryer. So assuming the temperature reaches above freezing during the day, it is possible to hang clothes outside in the winter. Yeah!!!!
 
Taken from my blog Earthmama's Adventures in Green Living
 
UPDATE:
SinceI wrote this post, I have hung out to dry all but one load of laundry. If I get the first load started by 8am, I can easily hang out two or three loads. So if I stay on top of laundry (meaning I do laundry every day or everyother) I could easily hang dry all my clothes and not use the dryer at all.