In Europe we have a device known as "the sun". It's sort of like this big ball of flame that hangs in the sky...

Obviously you're not talking about the UK. Maybe you live in Spain.

I must admit that I do have a south-facing bay window...

The sun's drying power certainly isn't at its best at this time of year, but if I wash things after work in the evening, and get them in the sun's line of sight ready for sunrise the next day, I can expect 1 day to dry shirts (ironed in that evening's darkness)/underwear/socks, 2 days to dry pullovers/fleeces/trousers, and 3 days to dry towels/bedsheets/jeans. (That's "dry" as in "bone dry", meaning I can put them in a drawer.)

I'm sure that to people accustomed to using their 2.5 ton V8 pickup truck to drive a bag of wet clothes to be dried at a launderette like normal people, this whole thing seems improbably primitive - whatever next, outdoor loos? 3.5mm headphone jacks? - but it works for me!

I live in Cyprus. During summer drying using the fireball in the sky takes about an hour and costs nothing. It's also surprising environmentally friendly.

Line drying is always an option. But when you need a dryer you need a dryer. I don't particularly use dryers but when you have guests coming having your laundry hanging around kind of kills the atmosphere.

I live in Seattle. Please describe more of this thing your people call "sun".

Or you could dial back the snark and open your mind to the idea that not everyone lives where to do, even other Europeans.

You don't even need sun to hang dry clothes. When there's bad weather, we just hang the clothes in the basement. Or in the living room. It'll take a day or two, but who cares.

That's what my wife does, she refuses to dry her clothes in the dryer, saying they last longer with air drying. Apparently she's on to something; my oldest surviving clothes are about five years old (apart from my Hawaiian shirt collection which I always air dry), while she still has stuff from college that isn't faded or worn out. We are both in our late 30s.

She has several hanging racks that slip onto the top of a standard interior door; each rack can hold up to eight hangers, though in practice she only dries four or five items per rack. With three racks, that covers two loads of her shirts, blouses, jeans, and dress pants. She does use the dryer for her socks (thrown in with my clothes), as well as for our towels and bed linens, but she makes sure we don't over-dry the towels so they stay soft. We also have a line in the back yard for linens in the summertime.

Going back to the topic of top-loading versus front-loading washers, we finally had to get rid of our second-hand 30+ year old top loader when a part broke that was no longer available even on the secondhand market (basically we would have had to track down and buy a donor machine to get the part). What we bought to replace it was the closest we could get to a traditional top-loader, and so far it seems to be holding up well. It's a bit more advanced than a traditional machine; it has load sensing and a super-high speed spin cycle, and it's a hybrid digital/analog control system. I have a feeling it will probably last at most 10 years before we need to service it, which is better than I expected from a new machine. I don't remember the model number, but the brand is Amana (first I'd heard of that brand).