Solar Clothes Dryer

No doubt about it, doing laundry can be a chore.  But, it is one of my favorite chores.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe because I get a feeling of accomplishment from seeing the pile of dirty laundry get smaller and smaller and then putting away nice clean clothes to wear next week.

Another thing I like about doing laundry is hanging clothes out to dry on my solar clothes dryer.  Here is a picture of it.

My mother used to call this a "clothesline" and I suspect that is what most people still call it.  I used to have one when we lived in town that looked like a big umbrella attached to a pole that was sunk into the ground.  It was amazing how many clothes I could dry on that at one time.    

We didn't  bring that clothesline with us when we moved to the farm.   I figured that I'd just go to Walmart or somewhere and buy another one to put up here.  However, in the mean time, Tom rigged up the one above for me between the poles of the carport.  That has been over 2 years ago and I'm still using it. It will only hold one load of clothes.  But, in the summer time, most clothes will dry before the next load of clothes is ready to hang out.

I've never done any research to determine just how much energy (and, therefore, money) it saves to dry clothes outside.  But, it has got to be quite a bit, because a load of jeans will dry much faster outside on a hot summer day than they will inside.

Unfortunately, the heating element on my solar clothes dryer is going to go out this week.  We've already had several days this fall when it was too cold to hang clothes outside and this week we have a cold front coming that is suppose to drop the high daytime temperatures into the 40s.  I imagine it will be next spring before I'll be using my solar clothes dryer again.