Some advantages:
1. Clothes last longer with less dryer agitation
2. Less agitation means less lint
3. Lower carbon emissions and gas/electric bills
I have a gas clothes dryer at home but I hang dry my clothes year round.
In the summer I have a line, more delicate and fade-senstitive items get hung in the shade while towels, sheets, undershirts, socks and underwear can go in the sun. If you hang them in the morning or evening when light is less intense, or bring them in as soon as they dry during sunnier hours, there's very little risk of fading in my experience. The most delicate items are hung inside on a drying rack.
In the winter or rainy periods I have a folding indoor drying rack that I hang clothes on. It takes longer but still works. During furnace weather I can leave them in front of a vent and the dry furnace air gets some humidity as well.
Some tips if you haven't hang dried before:
You may notice your clothes are stiff after air drying. Depending on your water hardness you may be using too much soap (most detergents recommend too much). Try using less, or add plain white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser (no commercial softener)
Vinegar will soften the water, remove soap buildup from the washer and clothes, and leaves fabric soft without any other artificial softeners.
Gigantic gas-powered clothes dryer is one of the only things I miss about life in USA.
A lot like cooking food, that's a time to let your mind wander and breathe.
But I still do it because it seems wasteful to use a dryer, and damages the clothes as well.
YMMV, of course...
(Possibly relevant: my clothes consist primarily of a few identical pairs of shorts and fatigue pants, and 20 identical heavyweight no-brand T-shirts, plus maybe a hoodie...)
In contrast, my experience with the dryer is clothes and up looking threadbare and worn from a high heat dryer. Just look at how quickly the lint trap fills up.
I wash my clothes and dry them according to type with automatic settings which end the cycle early if the clothes are dry before the full cycle is complete
On the flip side when I lived in a place where dying clothes outside was the norm there was no avoiding sun bleached clothes unless you dryer your clothes at night (which only partially worked because it was a tropical climate)
Another benefit of line drying is you don't need to iron, we don't iron clothing. The only times I've ironed in the last couple of decades is job-interviews and attending Buck House.
I use the dryer for clothes that don't matter, and line dry the nicer ones.
Likewise washing without tumbling is much gentler but clothes dry a lot longer.
The second photo is my newest t-shirt, and the fourth is the oldest.
That looks like a huge difference to me, the first shot looks super old whereas the last shot looks brand new. What sort of difference were you hoping for?
I wonder if I'm looking at it the wrong way, and all the "fluff" has been sucked out of the fourth one by the dryer, which probably weakens it.
Line-dried clothes and beddings smell wonderful (even if you use detergents and softeners that don't contain perfume) after hanging out to dry.
To each his/her own!
I don't put a ton in, and I imagine most of it is neutralized by leftover soap residue and a relatively hard water supply.
Land of the free where you can shoot a person that enters your garden but you can't dry out your clothes there because it's unsightly.
Freedom encompasses freedom of association, where you may voluntarily agree to additional restrictions as part of such an association. The definition of freedom you seem to be using is incoherent. You can't have both the "freedom" to enter into a voluntary contract and also the "freedom" to violate the contract at will. The two are contradictory.
Back to the topic at hand, this is pitting the aestethic feelings of some versus the right of others to be thrifty and efficient (and green, as line-drying is definitely more environment-friendly than using a machine which pulls 2-5KW of power).
It would be much more thrifty and efficient if I could walk around naked and shit and piss where ever I want, because then I wouldn't have to buy clothes, clean them, or waste money on flushing a toilet.
I honestly don't understand how all that freedom neighbourhood association restrictions work.
pretty much everyone who lives in these kinds of places has at least one rule on the books that they think is dumb, but at the end of the day most people do actually want their neighbors to cut their lawns and stuff like that, so they choose to live somewhere that has at least some of these restrictions.
What if I own land there because I bought it or inherited it? At which point do I freely enter those free neighbourhood associacions and agreements? Are they attached to the land? How exactly are they free if they are bundled? Is it like "freely" agreeing to see ads because if I don't agree I'll be cut out from the service?
In my country interaction between people that live side by side is regulated by actual law and since it's universal it's limited. Like no emission of unbearable smells or actual poison and no constant noise. It's nobody's business if his neighbour cuts grass provided he doesn't do that all the time with especially loud lawnmower.
HOAs and the people who subject themselves to them are a self selecting group who want that kind of stuff. In some wealthy suburbs the town government functions basically like a HOA trying to maintain property values by keeping the "wrong" people out and keeping the "wrong" kind of development from happening. However, local governments mostly don't concern themselves with this level of micromanagement, it's the exception not the rule.
Caring about "unsightly" things is universal to rich busybodies worldwide. It's not about freedom, it's about doing things that inconvenience poor people so they don't move to your neighborhood.
For every horror story about an American HOA there's an equivilent
>Land of the free where you can shoot a person that enters your garden
Outside some very specific circumstances shooting someone who is on your property is likely to put you behind bars regardless of what state you do it in.
it might have that effect in some cases, but I don't necessarily think that's the intent. people put a lot of effort into making their home and yard look nice and they want to live with other people who also care. I live in a quiet lower-middle class neighborhood and people will be all over me if I don't cut my lawn for a few weeks; it's not just a "rich people" thing. I don't call them busybodies though. I get to enjoy the product of their work every time I sit on my porch, so I don't mind doing my part to make the street pleasant.
I like my HOA and it isn’t to keep poor people out. No more than high rent in SF is to keep poor people out. Market forces do that. I don’t think HOA is some evil force. I am biased of course, I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. Towns have building codes and appearance codes as well, sometimes for practical reasons, often purely for aesthetics.
Not having castle doctrine is equally if not more scary. The idea that I could wind up in jail because I didn't make enough effort to retreat within my own home is not exactly comforting. The idea that one has to retreat within their own home or personal vehicle is just kind of absurd to begin with. I can through my own actions greatly reduce the (already minuscule) chances of getting shot by someone else in their home. I cannot through my own actions effect (or at least not to nearly the same extent) the chances of having my life threatened by someone else.
I don't live somewhere "nice" by HN standards (I'm perfectly fine with where I live). While my house will probably never be robbed it will also probably never catch on fire yet I have smoke alarms and a couple fire extinguishers.
>and appearance codes as well, sometimes for practical reasons, often purely for aesthetics.
This is the HOA-esque behavior I'm talking about. Yes, it's common in suburbs of SF, on Long island, etc. It's not the norm.
Many are unaware that in the U.S. the police is not responsible for an individual's personal safety; see Warren v. District of Columbia, Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, etc.
If my home had two pairs of doors I'll be rushing through second one the moment I thought someone would try to brake in through the first one. Not because I had to, just because defending your stuff with your life and health is a bad choice. You have one life and body that will not be the same again after it's shot or stabbed or beaten, but you can always earn more money and get more stuff.
I can't just buy another wife
only if you spend a lot of time in other people's houses uninvited.
Or walk by police while black...
There are so many similar examples, that I wonder what this "free" part refers to anymore...
(Of course back in the day, even back in 1920 or so, Europe was a lot more regulated than the US).
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-it-illegal-florida-powe...
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resourc...
There's an updated "American Pie" song in here somewhere...
So I think you might be stretching it a bit to say that they're ubiquitous here.
In my experience, the only flat I've rented that didn't have a dryer was a student hole in Preston that didn't have a washing machine either.
Maybe it's a sign of the times, maybe Lancashire is a cluster of dryer-lovers, but this is my anecdata.
"In the North literally every house has one."
"they've been ubiquitous since forever"
Clearly, neither of these things are true.
(I can't comment on the north, Scotland etc; I haven't been in enough private houses there.)
There's usually a breeze, and unless it's actually raining the clothes dry soon enough outside.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers-in-...
Shows that only a little over half even have dryers. One look around from my back garden tells me that this is fairly accurate (if anything, I would say more than 50% of my neighbours dry on a line outside)
>Same for refrigerators, dish washers, garbage disposals, washing machines, and of course dryers
Ime, dryers aren't the same as the others as they tend to ruin clothes used so a reliance on them is bad
In America “You’re free to do whatever you want”
Conditions apply.
The other problem with drying clothes outside is pollen, pollution and other allergens and irritants.
In the USA, we don't hang clothes out because we changed our cultural norms with the introduction of convenience machines. Once air conditioning became affordable, we all bought it. Same for refrigerators, dish washers, garbage disposals, washing machines, and of course dryers. Having a machine to do your work for you was seen as a middle-class status symbol, in addition to relieving housework.
Once line-drying became passé, people began to dislike the sight of line-dried clothes (it reminded them of being lower-class) and so was now "unsightly". Neighborhood association bylaws were passed to ban line-drying completely, and many apartment buildings also banned the practice. So now around 80% of homes in the USA have a washer and dryer, and people in apartments use laundromats or apartment facilities.
This article from the BBC mentions the millions of U.S. homeowners who were banned from using clotheslines: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11417677