Drying Rack

A long time ago, when I had a Pinterest account, I was looking up ways to air dry laundry indoors and came across someone who had repurposed their old baby crib into a snazzy jig. It sat flat against the wall when not in use, and she just propped it up when she hung clothes on it. The idea stuck.

My laundry bathroom is so small that I couldn't mount anything on the wall without rendering other critical bathroom components useless...like the toilet. So, I mounted the first rack to the ceiling. Complete with hinge feature for what I perceived would be "easy loading". One load later, I realized it was much easier to load the rack when it was flat on the ceiling. Oh well, sweet hinge design, it was good while it lasted.

I used the drying rack off and on as the mood struck. Then, one day recently, I was using one of those online calculators to figure out our household's carbon footprint. This was a really detailed calculator where I put in actual gas and electric usage, car mileage, and inches of insulation in the attic. The whole shebang. It turns out, I could cut our carbon dioxide output by 10% or more simply by line-drying our 5-6 loads of laundry a week (electric dryer, coal burning power plant). I dilly-dallied no more and put up a second rack. Ta daaaaaaa!

One load drying, room for three more :)

I've had a bit of a learning curve, but I think we're in a good place now. I still machine-dry one load a week of bath towels, washcloths, and cloth napkins. Much less than before. And I like the smell of clean, wet laundry in that room. With dry winter air, it's a quick process. We'll see how it goes with the warm, humid climate of summer.