I agree clothes are stiff when they are sun dried. For most of my clothes, however, after I put them away in my dresser or hang them up for a few days they are not really stiff anymore. I don't know why that is, maybe the cooling off? There are some that stay bit stiff but after I put them on they soften up really quickly. I imagine different natural fibres retain stiffness for longer.

Keep up the fabulous work.

I use a wooden folding rack for all large items. I put t-shirts on hangers and hang them. Yes, clothes come out a bit stiff, but my family actually likes them that way (or so they claim!) and the tshirts on hangers are great - no folding needed, if you have the closet space. Plus, clothes don't wear out as quickly, or shrink. Socks, underwear, etc. go in the dryer - but that's only about 1/4 of the laundry so it's still a big savings in gas.

If the stiffness is really a bother, you can pop the clothes in the dryer for a few minutes when they're just barely damp - it hardly takes any time to soften them up.

In winter, to avoid the rain, I just move the rack inside - it moves around the house a bit depending on what people are doing and if we have company.

What I used to do, and will start doing again now that you've reminded me, was put the clothes in the dryer on the "air" setting [no heat] for 15-20 minutes. This would soften them nicely and started the drying process without using the dryer's heating element. Then I hung them on my clothes rack on my sun-filled apartment balcony -- or inside if it was raining. Thanks for reminding me. This will save a lot on my electric bill!

I have been hanging dry my clothes for quite a few months now, and yes, I love the smell after the sun dried them. The way around the stiffness is I first put the newly washed clothes in the dryer for 5 minutes, then take them out and hang them out to dry under the sun, then after they are dried. I put those stiff ones back in the dryer for another 5 minute round on low heat, and usually after that, the stiff goes away. But yeah, it really depends on the fabric too, like yesterday, I wash two bath towels, one dried nice and soft, the other dried stiff as paper...

I did have the same question as this reader why you don't sun dry your clothes under the sun when I was reading that article on how you do your laundry too, but I just thought Florida must be humid and rains all the time so it's not the best solution.

Debra, I love your book and your website. You have educated so many including myself. I am forever greatful for all the research you have done and passing all that knowledge to the rest of us. Really, thank you and keep up the excellent work!!

I use a clothesline here in hot hot hot Los Angeles. The only thing that I find that gets stiff are the cotton towels. Personally the dried in the sun smell and WHITENESS (sun reacts with the water to bleach the whites better than anything synthetic...afterall, water and hydrogen peroxide are only one oxygen atomo apart) are so worth any stiffness I encounter.

Anyway, if I need my cotton towels soft I just take them down from the line fully dried or 90% dried and I put them in the dryer with the heat off but with dryer balls inside (dryer balls are cheap...like $10...and radically reduce drying time). I have two of those dryer ball things and they beat the cotton back into softness. Not using heat reduces the energy costs significantly. Also, if it's an option you're interested in, bamboo/cotton towels remain soft even when air-dried.

Debra,
I LOVE your humility!! Your lack of arrogance is a fresh breeze.

I hang my clothes out and I love the stiffness of the sheets and towels, but if I didn't I would put them in the dryer for about 5 mins after they are dry. I do this when I have company and think my guests might not like my card-board sheets and towels. This technique could also be used if you live in a climate that isn't conducive to air-drying. Most clothes will get medium dry hanging on the line and they can be finished off in the dryer thus saving a lot of energy.

One other suggestion: It helps to dry loads one right after another to save on heating the dryer up for each load.

Here's to loving our earth and enjoying it in the way that best suits our individual lives!!

Sonja

I used a clothesline right through raising 4 children and in rainy BC, Canada too. I often had two full lines of clothes (I had a double clothesline) and I got them out really early in the morning. Then I would go out about half-way through the day and turn them inside out. (Well really I'd start out with them inside out, and turn them right side around on the second turn, so they'd be ready to be put away.) It wasn't all that difficult and I love the fresh smell to them. I also loved taking advantage of the natural drying power of the environment, and not making the environment worse by using the dryer.

Another secret, which probably won't help you in Florida, but if you can get the clothes to freeze, when they begin thawing they dry much more quickly. (I trick my mother taught me and she would know because she came from snowly Manitoba.)

This may sound silly, but do you use a fabric softener during the final rinse cycle? My experience has been that clothes dry stiff when I don't use fabric softener, or not enough fabric softener. When I do, I actually have no problems with stiffness.

I don't think that all fabric softener does is to reduce static cling. I have no problem with static here. My 100% cotton garments and towels do become softer with the addition of fabric softener, although I don't know how that works.

I think the dryer does have its place. Sometimes, the weather is simply inclement to line drying. However, it's true that cutting down the use of the dryer to any extent is a good thing, so let's try that as much as we can!

All of the months that I run the furnace (which is most of them here in Michigan), I dry clothes on a drying rack in my bedroom--not all of them, just enough to keep the air moist. I save $ and energy by not running the dryer so much and I don't need a humidifier or vaporizer. I don't dry clothes on the line because they turn into big pollen catchers and I'm allergic. I lived in South America for a couple years and the way they kept clothes from getting wrinkly on the line there was to hang them freshly rinsed, never rung out and still streaming wet.

Dear Debra and everyone on this site who cares about the earth and each other,

Heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful FREE information generously shared through (and by), Debra Dadd. By the way, I think Debra is an angel in disguise trying to help us poor earthlings out of the toxic messes we've found ourselves in. I don't think she'll ever tell, however. That might break the celestial rules for angels.

Anyway I just wanted to do my part to address the question of drying clothes in the dryer vs line drying and the challenges there-of.

A friend of mine who was born and raised in Fiji, (there are no dryers in the entire community), dries her laundry by wringing them out, hanging them for a bit, and ironing them to finish the job.
She says it's how they all do laundry rain or shine. I had always wondered why she looked so tidy and well-dressed.

Thanks for listening!

Hi Debra -

Thank you for everything you do for us and your dedication to non toxic living.

My grandmother lived in Memphis Tennessee, a very humid area, and she hung her laundry outside twice a week. She had six children , so I know there was quite a bit for her to do. I was priviledged to watch her do this many times. She had a very large backyard and a long clothesline to accomodate the big family and grand children who would visit. She always tried to pick a day to do laundry that was sunnier, and she IRONED, that is the key word, anything that was stiff. It was the nicest, freshest, feeling clothing and sheets I ever encountered. I am not sure if she ironed our underwear or not, I don't think so.

Her housekeeping routines were a part of her life and I remember them portrayed pleasantly, not as a terrible chore. She preferred to do the laundry rather than cook... Now days, I don't know if that type of attention to the laundry would be workable for us all. But it brings back the most pleasant memories for me which I cherish.

Yours, Lynn

I wear cotton only and I don't like the stiffness due to our very hard water in San Diego. (I haven't tried ironing.) I have been using the vegetable glycerin and water formula that I read about in a magazine many years ago. It worked very well as a fabric softener.

Lately I have been experimenting with using baking soda in the wash cycle and then pouring vinegar into the fabric softener cup. I think it works but I haven't used it enough to say for sure. I think I remember using baking soda and having it work, too.

The glycerin was a nuisance because I had to measure and mix it with water. Also, I had stored the glycerin bottle in a very warm place and noticed mold growing in the bottle, though that probably would never happen under normal storage conditions. But it cooled my enthusiasm. When I do hand laundry, I add a few drops of straight
glycerin to the final rinse water.

What I've noticed working is to use less detergent than you think you need. We air dry a large amount of clothes and I can't say that we have any stiffness with our clothes. For a once a week load of clothes for me and my husband, we use about 1 TBSP of detergent. I think that nowadays we use too much detergents especially when you add in softeners and stain stuff - just think, any thing that you pretreat in a load of wash, that's just extra detergent in the water and later in the rest of your laundry as the clothes agitate and rinse out.

in regards to the stiff laundry from clothes line, I remmove them when barely damp, and put them in a the dryer for a few minutes. no more stiff clothes

In regards to the "clothesline article", I myself love the fresh smell of sheets and clothes being hung outside. But with me, I have allergies, so to hang the sheets and clothes outside its not a good thing cause the pollen klings to them. So for people with allergies shouldn't really hang their laundry outside. I stopped waking up in the morning with a stuffy head. I thought I would share this with you.

I recently started to line dry, and stiff towels are my problem. However, I just bought some towels, and gosh, they are not stiff. They have only been line dried, so maybe if towels have been tubled dried in the past with heat, maybe that takes something out of them? I don't know. But of all the articles out there, not one addresses this issue sufficiently that I can say I have found a solution that is dryer free, except the ironing one, and I am going to try that one.

I live in an apartment and bought a wooden clothes rack that I dry clothes on all year and it's easy to collapse or move to another area! During the summer I place it by the sliding glass door and allow the warm air to dry the clothes so I don't get bugs on them or risk an unexpected down pour and they still smell wonderful. In the winter the heat inside dries them just as efficiently. My grandmother has always dried clothes on the line outside during the summer, and inside on lines she hung in her basement during the winter. I can still remember walking through the lines of clothes outside just to "smell the sun". My clothes never get stiff but I do recall my grandmother's towels getting stiff when she hung them outdoors so she just fluffed them in the drier for a few minutes.

One tip that I thought would be helpful to those who are using the dryer balls is tennis balls. After my clothes have hung on the line and dried (and are horribly stiff), I throw the clothes and two tennis balls in the dryer on the air setting for about 5 minutes. Most of the time, this works great for softening the clothes and is far less costly than the dryer balls.

When my clothes get rained on, they are a lot softer after they dry again!

I have heard other people say they use the dryer for 5 minutes before or after line-drying to make clothes softer.

I don't mind the stiff clothing because it keeps that "clean" feeling longer than tumble-dried clothing.

I agree with the suggestion that too much detergent makes for stiffer clothing. A tried and true method for eliminating the detergent residue is to put approx. 1/3 cup vinegar in the rinse water. There may be a slight vinegar odor as you remove clothing from the washer, but this dissipates with line drying.

My biggest dream in life is to have a yard with a clothesline. Until then, I live on the second floor and have lined my balcony with some plastic mesh so noone can see that I have a little clothesline that I use for my hand laundry. ;>} I have been using Sensi-clean laundry detergent for hand laundry and it leaves clothing just slightly soft. (This stuff is sudsy, would not work for front load machines. It is for babies and sensitive skin. Vegetable base, no fragrance.)

I too use a clothesline as much as possible and can share my experience.

We lived in Italy for 3.5 years and nobody had a dryer there. They simply found places to hang their clothes no matter the weather. Our house had an outdoor clothesline that was right outside the laundry room door and was in full sun. However, there was also a clothesline under an overhang on the side of the house and a few lines strung in the garage. It never rained in the summer, so we didn't have to worry then. But in fall and winter, it rained a lot, and on those days, I'd simply hang them either in the garage or under the overhang. They would take several days to dry, but eventually, they'd dry. If I needed something more quickly, I could always hang it up in our bedroom or in the bathroom where there was most likely some heat, and they'd dry within a day. My neighbor next door had a balcony outside her laundry area and had a free-standing drying rack on the balcony and a clothesline the hung off the raling. If she had clothes drying and it started raining, she'd bring in the free-standing rack and just put a piece of plastic over the rack that hung off the balcony railing. Often, people there will have canopies of some sort over their balconies, especially if they live in apartment buildings, and those will protect their clothes if it rains.

My mother also has a clothesline, and as long as it's not raining (or snowing), she hangs clothes out all year long. If it's way below freezing, the clothes may freeze up some, but they will eventually dry, especially if they're in a sunny spot.

As far as the stiffness goes, my husband loves our stiff towels. He says it like a natural exfoliant when he gets out of the shower! The rest of my things are not stiff at all typically, but I also use a trick that my mother taught me when I was little. Before you hang each item up, give it a good snap. Do the same thing when you take it down. That movement seems to soften fibers up somewhat. I have found that if I hang out my towels on a really windy day, they come out almost as soft as if they've been put in a dryer.

Part of what has to happen here in the US is for society to accept clotheslines as something useful instead of an eyesore. Too many communities have restrictions against clotheslines, so even if people wanted to use them, they couldn't.

I don't think weather conditions should deter people to hang clothes to dry. We live in a small apartment (600 sq ft) with no yard, and we live in a very humid climate (Washington, DC). Still, my husband and I use wooden drying racks to dry our clothes inside our apartment. The greatest feature of the drying racks is that they can fold up and put away when not in use. We use two small racks for one load and drying racks are available in larger sizes to hang more clothing. As I like to say, when you put your mind to something, most anything can be accomplished!

As for stiff clothing, hang dry and then stick them in the dryer for 10 minutes or so to soften them. That way you use much less energy than using a full drying cycle.

Hope this helps!

Katie

I just found your site. How nice. I looked up "stiff laundry" and yours was at the top of Google. I realized after reading the entries that although I thought I was seeking how to solve the problem, what I learned was that it is all perspective -- stiffness is not really a problem at all.

I thought, "well, why am I asking? has anyone complained?" Nope, no one in the house is complaining. It's just an adjustment. The biggest "problem" are the towels. And now that I think about it, it's just an adjustment. The towels are fine and the humidity of a hot shower makes them soft eventually, if that is what I want.

I am lucky that I have a clothesline and in a place where no one will complain. (we live on a lake and I'm sure that boaters are surprised to see our undies on the line -- yes I hang the socks and undies in summer, too.) Since I live in Michigan, in the winter I lay all the smaller clothes on the table and drape them over chairs. We also have a wood stove with bars to hang socks. I only use the dryer when it is snowing and for larger clothes. As an aside, stiff jeans are a good excuse for not eating fattening foods!

I agree with the previous poster about different perceptions of "stiffness". I personally love how my towels feel after being dried on the line, and the stiffness is pretty much gone after the first shower.

I would love to dry in the sun, but our neighborhood owners association does not allow outside clotheslines, so we have hung ours in the garage. I use it and a folding rack all year long. I am using cloth diapers for our son and I hang those as well. In the summer I don't use our dryer at all.

As our family grows, I will keep putting up more clothes lines. I have even thought of putting some retractable clothes lines in our bedroom when we need additional space!

I do hang out new fabric items outside to air out before I wash them.
Then I wash several times using vinegar I

For people who are allergic to pollen, hanging laundry, particularly bedding, outside
can aggravate their sensitivities.
Also the odors of air pollutants can absorb into fabric.

Hanging wet items inside is also problematical as it can lead to mold growth.

I do hang new items outside to air, esp if they have picked up fragrances in shipping or from a store. Doing this before I launder cuts down on the number of washes needed to get these odors out.

If items are still smelly after laundering three times with vinegar in the rinse water
I soak them in a vinegar solution for several hours, put through the spin cycle without rinsing the vinegar out, and rehang them outside for several days or even weeks, & then rewash.

When using vinegar make sure items are covered with water before adding, dilute the vinegar (1/4 to 1 cup vinegar to 1- 2 quarts water, depending on the size of the load), and be careful not to dump mixture all in one spot on the fabric items. This will avoid causing streaks in fabric.

For stiffness in towels and other items use 1/2 cup vinegar or use baking soda.

I've been told the stiffness is caused by detergent buildup.

Also use 1/2 to 1/4 of the recommended amount of detergent. I have a front loader machine and find that I can get by with 1/8 the amount of detergent and by using either vinegar or baking soda have soft clothes coming off the line.

Although I miss the ease of the dryer higher energy costs have forced these changes. We choose to hang our clothes on a line and drying racks due to the high cost of propane and it became a choice of eating or drying the clothes in the dryer.

During the winter they will dry inside on drying racks and an indoor line strung between 2 wall. Not fancy but you do what you have to.

If you belong to a HOA (home owners association) you can usually change the rules. Check your covenants and by-laws (Every member/homeowner should have a complete copy. If you don't, ask your officers to give you one.).

Nothing is written in stone and there should be a process to change the covenants. If there isn't I would contact the state you live in and ask why there are covenants and by-laws that can't be changed by the homeowners it governs.

I would use good ol' patriotism and pride in putting forth a change. In these days of dwindling resources we can not afford to have HOA's that limit how people can live their lives in a manner that will hopefully save our planet for the next generation.

Having a vining plant on a trellis in a container is a nice way to hide laundry on a balcony. Most Koreans don't use dryers. It's hard on clothes. In Seoul, the apartments are designed to have balconies, sometimes interior, where people use drying racks to hang up their laundry. When visiting America, they often guy a drying rack, even when the apartment has a dryer in it!

Here's my favorite way to dry clothes:

The last thing I do at night is one load of laundry. (Here in Los Angeles, we're encouraged to save electricity in the daytime.)

Then I hang everything on a wooden rack and stand it up in the bathtub, out of everyone's way, and everyone's eyesight. In the morning, the clothes will be almost dry, so I pop them in the dryer for a few minutes. By the time I've brushed my teeth and had my coffee, they're soft, warm, and ready to wear -- and no pollen or pollution!

In regards to the wooden drying racks I see allot of people using, is there a particular brand recommendation that doesn't have a new chemical smell? I can not handle any smells what so ever, so I haven't even looked into a drying rack yet.

For most my clothes, I wear all cotton as well, I like to dry them partially in the dryer, and then hang them around the house from door hooks to finish drying. Cuts down on the wear and tear of the clothing (from what I've read at least) and saves energy. Towels and sheets I dry all the way in the dryer on low, no way I could hang those up unfortunately.

As to hanging outdoors (which I would love to do), I have several concerns:
- Behind my house is a busy street with all kinds of traffic, but it's buffered with a preserve. I worry about pollutants clinging to the clothes as they dry.

- I have allergies to grass and Pollen, so I worry about Pollen sticking to the clothes.

- Lastly I've seen others mention HOA's, there isn't an HOA here but an actual City Ordnance against clothes lines! I won't let that stop me from hanging clothes out if I need to, I would just find a portable solution so no one could complain.

Wooden drying racks manufactured today often have odious odors.
Indoor chrome drying racks are available. A google search yielded several sources.

Stiffness in towels, a windy day usually solves that problem but if the wind isn't strong enough that day I pop them in the dryer for about 15 minutes on air fluff and they come out nice and soft.

Funny story about my first experience in hanging clothes, my grandmother had surgery on her knee and couldn't navigate the basement steps. So I assisted her in doing her laundry one day. She yelled instructions on how to sort, load, add detergent to the washer (wringer washer no less) etc from the top of the basements steps. She did not have a dryer so every thing was lined dried. Well I had gotten three loads of laundry hung outside when she finally decided to get up and check my progress. SHE WAS HORRIFIED. I had done it all wrong!!!!! I had to take it all down and redo it as she yelled instructions from the back porch. So here goes. From Left to right it goes big to little and light to dark. Of course I hung the shirts up wrong as well as socks, sheets, her bras and other items. Also, she had T-Post lines with I believe 4 lines well you have to have the clothes on those four lines a certain way too depending on which way the wind is blowing. So if the wind is blowing out of the west the towels and sheets go on the line on the east side. This way the towels and sheets don't blow up against the clothes on the next line and wrap them up around the line and it allows the wind to blow freely through all the clothes (I hope I described that well).

I still love to hang clothes to this day and do it EXACTLY as she instructed me to, I am sure on laundry day she looks down, smiles, and says good job!

If your HOA doesn't allow clotheslines and other green things simply change the covenants and by laws and also contact your state representatives. Many states are outlawing covenants that discourage green living.

Check your covenants on how to get rid of outdated sections. Usually it just takes a majority.