I line-dried my laundry this summer, which cut household electricity use by half - half! 23 cents a day! - not an economic use of my time, by itself.
However, drying laundry is an amazingly effective cooler of the air passing over it and the ground it shades. (The first probably isn't true in humid areas, but it was really pleasant in a dry summer.) Since parts of the US are having rolling power brownouts whenever the temperature goes way up or down, it seems especially worthy to make line-drying easy in a way that also shades the walls of houses, so that air-conditioning demands are lower.
Looped lines along the upper stories might do it; they could go down when storm windows go up, and vice versa. An ultra-slippery net mounted behind the clothes, to keep them from picking grime up off the siding, would help. A social fashion for displaying one's expensive color-coordinated sheets would be needed (coordinated with what? One's displayed undies, I guess).
I like my towels all snappy, but something to soften them in the tumble-drier way might be wanted.-- hello_c, Dec 14 2000 Not only that- Drying your clothes indoors is an excellent way of humidifying the air during those winter months! A side beifit is that you have ample opportunity to study yor clothing as interior decor- you will realize that there are items you could really do without. Streamline your wardrobe =less laundry time =fewer clothes drying in the middle of your living room= you have to start up that damn humidifier after all...-- DragonMother, Dec 20 2000 In my climate, if we humidified the atmosphere indoors in winter, we'd have bracket fungus growing from the sideboards. Toadstools in the carpets! Weevils in the roofbeams!
But in less amphibious places, esp. with radiant heat, much better.
I don't see how streamlining my wardrobe reduces the amount of laundry I do; that's more related to how dirty I get. I'd just be washing the same clothes more often.-- hello_c, Dec 21 2000 isn't this consumer advice?-- youngtimer, Jun 29 2004 random, halfbakery