How to Hang Dry Laundry (Inside or Outside)

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Most people use a dryer to dry their laundry. Some run on natural gas and some run on electricity. They do a good job and make short work of doing the laundry. Assuming they’re still working.

Any power outage shuts down most everything in a home and that includes the clothes dryer. Even gas dryers won’t operate because the days of pilot lights are long gone, and most all gas dryers have electronic ignition.

For the most part, a day or two without electricity has little impact on laundry chores. Most of us don’t do laundry that frequently and we just let it pile up for a couple of day. But when power outages continue into weeks, the laundry pile grows and grows. Laundromats are an obvious solution until everyone decides to go. They’re also surprisingly expensive these days.

Then again, some people have chosen an off-grid lifestyle and it’s their laundry habits that we’ll pay close attention to.

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Welcome to Clothesline Drying

If you’ve never dried clothes on a clothesline it’s easy to assume there’s nothing to it. For the most part, you’d be right. But anyone who starts drying clothes on a line soon learns that some things can go wrong. There are also alternative ways to hang and dry clothes that don’t require the customary clothesline and clothes pins.

Clothesline 101

There are ropes and cordage sold and specifically marked as “clotheslines.” That’s important. It’s tempting to think that any rope will do, and if that’s all you have it’ll work, but a clothesline has a unique characteristic.

Clothesline cordage has a thin wire running through the center of the line. This helps prevent the clothesline from sagging. It comes as a surprise for some first-time “clothesliners” when they see how deeply most ropes will sag when a long line of wet clothes are folded over the line.

A clothesline with a wire inside helps to prevent this sag. If you are using a standard rope, a trucker’s hitch is the best bet for a knot to tie the rope to a tree or other support.

A trucker’s hitch allows you to tighten the line as much as possible to prevent any sag.

When a clothesline containing the wire insert is used, the knots are much simpler and you don’t have to go to knot tying school to learn how to tie a complex knot like a trucker’s hitch.

Clothesline Length

Another misstep is when someone tries to extend a clothesline across a long distance. It may be tempting to just put up one, long line from those two trees at either side of your yard, but even a wired clothesline can sag as the distance grows.

The ideal length for a clothesline is 35 feet or less. That’s a little more than 10 yards. It shouldn’t be in a high traffic area and is ideally located in a sunny spot with some access to a breeze or prevailing winds.

The ideal height is 6 feet which assumes most adults will be raising their arms to get the laundry over the line. You can raise it if a sheet or blanket is touching the ground and that’s the primary consideration. You don’t want, clean and wet clothes in contact with the ground

Drying time will vary depending on the weave of the fabrics, how well they’ve been wrung out to remove excess moisture, the temperature, exposure to sunlight, prevailing winds and humidity levels. On average, figure 2 to 4 days on a reasonably pleasant day with sunshine and some amount of wind.

If a 35 foot clothesline won’t hold all of the clothes, add another line or you can try some of the alternative techniques for hanging and drying clothes.

Remember the Clothes Pins

If you’ve never seen a clothes pin you should probably read this article twice. They are an indispensable part of drying clothes on a line. Anyone tempted to believe just draping laundry over a line will suffice may soon find the wind has other ideas.

They’re cheap and you can use them for all sorts of projects requiring something to be clipped or temporarily held together. Buy a lot of them and don’t scrimp when clipping and pinning the clothes to the clothesline, or this other interesting laundry drying solution:

Meet the Clothes Tree

You can buy something called a clothes tree to dry clothes. They sort of look like a large patio umbrella framework that has been blown out by the wind. Their primary advantage is that they can concentrate a large amount of clothing in a small area.

The top struts extend out from a center pole and there are lengths or cordage that run through the extended struts.

As the struts widen out from the center pole, the length of cordage gets longer. Typically, smaller items like socks and underwear are hung on the shorter, inner lines and larger items like towels and sheets are hung on the outer and longer lines.

What’s great about a clothes tree is that it can be used indoors or outdoors. Because it can contain a lot of laundry in a small space it’s great for apartments, small yards or times when you just don’t want clothes hanging around everywhere.

Building Your Own Clothes Tree

If you’re living off-grid there’s a good chance you have all sorts of setups for drying clothes. If you’re one of those who have been surprised by a long-term power outage you may have to improvise. This is especially true if you’re unprepared for basic laundry chores and you live in an apartment without the convenience of a yard.

There are many photos of apartments in cities around the world where drying laundry is a common site on balconies. Unfortunately, some locales have ordinances against laundry on the balcony so drying indoors may be your only solution. That’s when a clothes tree can really come in handy.

In an apartment building a long-term power outage will present many challenges but at least you now have some options for drying laundry.

Indoor Laundry Drying Tips

Winter and rainy days make many things more difficult and drying clothes impossible. At least outdoors. And it doesn’t matter whether you have a backyard or a one bedroom apartment. When it’s raining or below freezing indoors is your only option.

A clothes tree allows you to dry the laundry indoors in a small space and avoids the madness of ropes and cordage running through the length of an apartment or living room. We’ll get into the details for building a DIY clothes tree at the end of the article.

But there’s good news and bad news about drying clothes indoors. The bad news is you have hanging clothes and bedding hanging around the house, or at least filling a corner of the room on a clothes tree.

The good news is that wet laundry drying in a room in winter is an excellent indoor humidifier. That can be particularly important if you’re heating your home with a wood burning stove or wood pellets.

If you’re heating with wood, whether it’s because of a power outage or a permanent off-grid lifestyle, you’re going to have a very dry heat. Some people actually hang a wet towel into a bucket to act as a DIY humidifier. When you’re drying laundry indoors humidity won’t be a problem, at least for a day or two.

And it might take a day or two for the laundry to dry. Without the benefit of direct sunlight or a breeze, it’s going to take longer for the clothes to dry. Then again, that very dry heat from the wood-stove can accelerate things a bit.

Apartment Laundry Tips

Another reason some people dry the laundry indoors is because they have no choice. Someone living in a high-rise apartment doesn’t have the benefit of a backyard. Then again, people around the world have found an alternative solution to indoor drying.

The Window Clothesline

The window clothesline is a common sight in many parts of Europe. A clothesline on a pulley is attached to the building and the window is opened to access the clothes.

The benefit of the pulley is that it almost creates an assembly line opportunity. As dry clothes are taken off the line, new and still wet laundry is clipped onto the line and the pulley sends it back on its way to dry.

DIY Clothes Tree

If you’re caught by surprise with a power outage or don’t feel like spending the money on a clothes tree, you can build your own. You can approach this a couple of different ways. One way it to build a teepee and run some cordage around the teepee to support your clothes.

A better way is to make an A-frame clothes tree that will actually fold so you can store it. Here’s what you need:

Tools, Hardware and Materials:

• Wood saw
• Knife or drawshave
• Six 4 to 6-inch bolts and nuts plus 12 washers
• Four 7-foot long support branches about 1 to 2-inches in diameter
• Four 4-foot long bracing branches about 1 or more inches in diameter

Directions:

1. Cut your long support poles so you have 4 poles exactly 7-feet long
2. Cut your bracing poles so you have 4 braces exactly 4 feet long
3. Stand up two of the 7-foot poles and drill a hole large enough to accommodate your bolt. Drill directly through the middle of the pole about 6 t0 8-inches from the top.
4. Repeat with the other two 7-foot poles.
5. Place your bolts through the holes through the poles with washers on either side and tighten the bolts.

• Place one of the braces on the side of one of the support poles about 4-feet from the bottom of the pole.
• Drill through the brace pole and the support pole and attach with bolts, washer and nuts. Here again, place washers on either side of the poles on the bolts.
• Tighten the nuts and repeat until all braces are attached to the poles.
• Spread you’re a-frame apart so the bottom poles are about 3 to 4-feet apart allowing the frame to be free-standing.
• Tie a length of cordage around one of the support poles about a foot or two from the top.
• Stretch the cordage across to the other pole and tie off with a knot or clove hitch.
• Continue to stretch, wrap and wind the cordage down the length of the poles so you have added opportunities to hang laundry. The cordage stretching across the poles should be about a foot apart on the poles.

Hang the laundry on the rack making sure the longer items aren’t touching the ground.

Unintended Consequences

It takes a while for clothes to dry outdoors whether it’s in your backyard or apartment patio. During that time a lot can happen. One of the most common laments is when a bird decides that a clothesline will make a good place to perch.

The problem with any bird perching is that eventually they’ll let loose with bird droppings. Make sure you take a close look before you hug that breezy fresh towel to your face.

One way to keep the birds at bay is to prop up one of those plastic owls they sell to keep critters out of gardens.

Most birds aren’t too happy to see an owl hanging around and the owl might keep the birds away.

You could also try attaching some strips of aluminum foil to your clothesline. The foil will flutter in the wind and the reflections might keep them from landing on that shirt you’ve scrubbed for 10 minutes.

Other hazards include dust in the wind, pollen, flying fluff from Cottonwood trees, and anything else drifting in the wind. The key is to get the laundry down as soon as things dry. Towels and blankets always take longer, but if the socks, t-shirts and other light fabrics are dry –get them off the line and into the closets and drawers.

Practice Makes Perfect

Well, sort of. But if you’re new to drying clothes on a line you’ll figure out plenty as time goes on. In the process you might be pleasantly surprised to find out your gas or electric bill is less if you keep drying the laundry this way when the power comes back on.

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