Save your Organic Cotton Clothes & Energy

Many of us remember when during the warmer, sunnier parts of the year our parents hung our family’s laundry in the back yard to dry. Many of us may also remember, quite romantically as I do, white sheets and colored shirts billowing in spring breezes leaving our garments smelling faintly of fresh cut grass. Despite these charming ancillary benefits of utilizing a clothesline, mom and dad probably hung clothes for another reason altogether: green money.

It’s expensive to run your drier because the contraption is an energy hog. In fact, it accounts for at least 6% of your home’s energy use - that puts it right behind your fridge in terms of the kilowatt sucking factor. And when my parents raised my brother, sister, and me on a dairy farm during equally hard economic times, 6% can add up. Still, there are other ways hanging your clothes to dry can save you cash.

Recall the last time you checked your lint trap and it was caked with some sort of multicolored cotton filth? That’s your favorite shirt and perfect fitting jeans being chewed up by the drier’s tumble and high heat. Your drier eats clothes and the lint trap is its toilet. If you want your gear to last, as your parents did, keep them out of the hungry mouth of that beast in your basement and, instead, hang them outside.

But, there is something else to line drying your clothes. This isn’t just a time of tough economic conditions; it’s also the time of climate change. If everyone using driers in the country – that’s 88 million households – dried their clothes on a line for just half the year, it would save 3.3% of our residential carbon from spewing into the air. That is a significant emissions improvement based on a simple change. Better yet, you get a lower carbon footprint and you save money. It’s time to get out those clothes pins.

For more information, check out these websites:
http://laundrylist.org/
http://blog.linedryit.com/eco_facts/

Brought to you by Daniel Sheats - Contributing Ranch Hand