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In praise of the European drying rack (2017)
- cpursley 5y agoAn electric dryer is money well spent. As is a dishwasher. I'd literally pay a multiple of what I currently pay for the convenience - both time and labor saved.
- cpach 5y agoElectricity is currently very expensive in Europe, and in many countries electricity comes from burning coal. So a device where clothes can dry without using electricity makes a lot of sense to me. In December, many households in Sweden had electricity bills of 10000-15000 SEK, or more (~$1100-1600 or ~€900-1400).
- bequanna 5y agoI’m not familiar with this, but it smells like a supply crisis caused by over regulation. Instead of trying to lower demand the focus should be on increasing supply and lowering prices.
- cpursley 5y agoOkay, wow. In Eastern Europe it's pretty cheap compared to that (actually, the number you gave is higher than many peoples salaries here). I think I'd be using a rack in your case as well.
- cpach 5y agoMany homes here warm the house only using electrical radiators. And it can get very cold in the winter. Not exactly the smartest way to heat a house, still widely used here.
- voisin 5y agoGiven the cost, it seems like there would be a big opportunity to install geothermal to bring that cost down. The payback would be quick with electricity costs like that.
- cpach 5y agoIndeed! And many households install such systems. There can still be obstacles though. Quite a few houses here lack a distribution system for the radiators. Those radiators are directly connected to the electricity system. I.e. the house lacks a water-based heat circulation system (or similar). One could retrofit such a system, but then it’s about double the cost compared to only installing the geothermal pump. The background to this situation is partly that in the 70s, the government required houses to be built this way. Electricity was cheap back then, we had lots of nuclear and water-power and wanted to get away from oil. Another thing to keep in mind that even a geothermal system requires some electricity to run – and they are not terribly effective when the weather is very cold outside.
- jasonpeacock 5y agoModern dishwashers are very efficient. You can clean a full load of dishes ( day's worth for two ppl cooking at home) with only 4 gallons of water! You can't handwash dishes with less water, nor can you get the water hot enough to sanitize the dishes like a dishwasher can.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ycombinatorio 5y agoIt is called a tancarville in France
- zimpenfish 5y agoWe've got an overhead airer on the balcony which is great during not-winter, especially since we're in a wind-trap corner. But it's pretty useless when the temperature is low (because stuff doesn't dry / goes solid) and also because the local wasps make a habit of hiding in the clothes for warmth. Then we resort to the radiators indoors because they'll be on anyway.
- bottle_roket 5y agoI find my towels get stiff and dense when I let them air dry (as opposed to soft and fluffy when I machine dry.) Am I doing something wrong or is this something people just get used to?
- frabbit 5y agoSame for me. I really dislike it.
- jjoonathan 5y agoI believe agitation is what gets rid of the stiffness and that's why dryers tumble.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lugoues 5y agoGet used to it or toss them in the dryer for a couple of minutes after they dry to soften them up.
- ginko 5y agoI guess fluffy towels would be nicer, but I generally prefer the stiffness of air-dried clothing to machine dried. Shirts in particular.
- hansthehorse 5y agoMy mom used a dryer (I'm in the US) but my dad insisted that the sheets be air dried on the line outside. If he was home for wash time he would do that for her. After she figured that out wash day was always on a Sunday.
- __d 5y agoIf you've always air-dried, there's nothing to get used to ... I guess I can see the appeal of soft fluffy towels, but I actually prefer mine stiff. I can't justify or explain it, but ... I do. Sheets as well .. thick linen sheets, air-dried so they're kinda hard ... mmmm.
- padde 5y agoHeh, I've grown up with exactly these racks... Countless of hours hanging clothes on these. ;)
- frabbit 5y agoAdding fan to the mix greatly improves the speed of this. It doesn't even have to be very forceful. (source: https://www.conservationphysics.org/wetstuff/wetstuff01.php https://www.conservationphysics.org/wetstuff/wetstuff01.php ) I've had my eye on this sort of thing for a while: https://www.viatekproducts.com/products/nubreeze-electric-drying-rack https://www.viatekproducts.com/products/nubreeze-electric-dr...
- euroderf 5y agoThat first link is a good one. Is it clear though why cotton sometimes shrinks ?
- a2tech 5y agoI laughed at her description of the drying rack 'holding more than a regular load of clothing'. My (American) clothes washer easily holds more than twice what she has displayed.
- Retric 5y agoI doubt your washing machine or dryer can simultaneously dry 25 pairs of blue jeans, which would fit on the rack. Let alone the 50 you’re suggesting.
- lerigner 5y agoYou should definitely avoid putting any Smurf DNA in your washing machine. Edit: previous comment was washing pairs of blue genes ;)
- jcranmer 5y agoWell, if you're using the washing machine to dry clothes, you're going to have a bit of a problem...
- rvba 5y agoThis rack will fold after putting more than 5-6 pairs of jeans. On a side note: does USA really treat this as a novelty? Drying racks? European style windows? https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4kjsnp/european_windows_are_awesome/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4kjsnp/european_win...
- wiredfool 5y agoNormally 20 eur in lidl, assuming they’re there this week. (Everything is eventually sold at lidl, nominally a food store, but also carries a revolving selection of inexpensive random stuff, from tools and hardware, to housewares and clothes, computer bits, sound level meters, and power washers. And arc welders, roughly every 6 months)
- jmrm 5y agoI love the Lidl Parkside tool brand. Inexpensive to buy, relatively durable, and easy to repair if they break.
- wiredfool 5y agoThey're definitely light duty tools, suitable for occasional use. They're not that much worse than the low end stuff in the big box HW stores for 2x the price. But they're not tools you're going to use for decades.
- kyriakos 5y agoDrying by using fusion power from the sun is convenient only if you live in a warm climate mostly in southern Europe. And even in that case, e.g. Cyprus where we enjoy 320+ sunny days a year there comes a time around January/February that it can take up to 2 days for clothes to dry.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Someone 5y agoI think air humidity has more to do with it than temperature. Clothes certainly can easily dry overnight inside a house at around 18 degrees Celsius.
- stavros 5y agoYou don't dry your clothes inside in the winter?
- kyriakos 5y agoHumidity from drying clothes is not exactly good for you or your home. That also assumes heating to dry them in the first place i.e. you need to increase consumption to account for the extra cooling from the drying clothes, turns out you may as well use a dryer and get the job done (at least for the cold months). For comparison though in the summer, drying a washer load takes around 2 hours during the day and maybe 4-5 during the night.
- stavros 5y agoTrue for the summer, we dry them inside in the winter and it does get a bit humid, but it doesn't really get much colder from drying the clothes. The humidity isn't great, though.
- ginko 5y ago>That also assumes heating to dry them in the first place You don't need heating either. I dry my bedsheets in a room with clotheslines in the roof of my apartment building. That has like 5-10C right now and they dry just fine. Also humid air is the least thing I'd worry about in Winter.
- philips 5y agoI recently installed two drying racks on pulleys in our laundry room. It is nice to have them affixed to the ceiling and out of the way.
- voisin 5y agoWith the added benefit that heat rises so that should be the warmest area.
- cpach 5y agoI could not live without such a rack (^_^)
- jiggawatts 5y agoThis article immediately raised some "journalistic red flags" for me. I've been reading articles more critically than the average person for decades, and I immediately notice when someone is pushing an agenda and "bending" the facts without outright lying. For example, take this sentence: "a recent study in the US indicated that Americans spend $9 billion dollars per year (!) on the electricity used to dry clothes." Billions of dollars is bad(!), right? But a quick division[1] with the population of the US shows that this is just $27.30 per capita per annum, or about $2 per week per household of 2 adults and 2 kids. Essentially nothing. Mind you, I have the exact same model of drying rack that the author does and I use it regularly. But is it necessarily better than an electric dryer? No. Racks have significant downsides: - If the weather is too humid, the clothes won't dry fast enough and end up smelling of mildew. We then have to rewash them, which is wasteful and damages the clothes. - Clothes dried on the track often end up stiff as cardboard or very wrinkled, and then need ironing, which also uses electricity. Clothes often come out of the dryer ready to wear, especially t-shirts. The heat and motion of the dryer fluffs them and removes wrinkles to a significant degree. - Those racks tip over all too easily. We can't put it out on the balcony without propping it up with some chairs, the slightest breeze will knock it over. Once wet clothes hit the dirty outside floor, they have re-washed! - They're a hazard to children. They not only fall over easily, but they tend to fold up in the process with enough force to break fingers or trap limbs. We're probably going to have to get rid of it entirely now that our little one is mobile. Etc... [1] Next time some political budget thing is announced on the news, pay careful attention to how they're describing the cost. Are they talking about the total dollars "over ten years" or the yearly cost per capita? Once you learn to notice this, you can mentally translate the former to "I want to make this cheap thing sound expensive." and the latter to "I want to make this expensive thing sound cheap."
- peppermint_tea 5y agofrom a north american now in europe that lives in a 2 room apartment and hangs his blankets weekly on the curtain pole (rack to small, no space) no... just no.
- gehsty 5y agoIt blows my mind Americans living in warm parts of the country tumble dry their clothes. We dry clothes outside between March and October in the UK, saves energy and money, and makes your clothes last longer (compared to a uk tumble drier at least!)
- elzbardico 5y agoMan, even in south america driers are a desirable appliance. Most of time we use the sun, but the kids need dry clothes in the dry season too! The only difference, is that separated driers are kind of considered obsolete here and everybody wants a washer-drier korean machine from samsung or LG.
- slibhb 5y agoDo they? Growing up in New England we had a rack like the one in the article (first time I've heard them described as "European") and a clothesline and we still used an electric dryer. Depending on the size of your family, it's a lot of work to hang everyone's clothes to dry.
- yolo69420 5y ago
- gambiting 5y agoI live in the UK and the fact that a lot of people here don't use a tumble dryer is blowing my mind. It's so humid most of the year that normally when I put clothes on an indoor rack they take 2-3 days to fully dry, by which time they develop this characteristic musky smell. And dry outside? When? Inbetween the frequent rain? No thank you. Tumble dryer is where it is. And yes, on a nice summer day sure, I also hang my clothes in the garden - but for 95% of the year that's not really an option, and I don't want to wait days for my clothes to be dry and my house to have this specific smell that develops in high humidity.
- WithinReason 5y agoCold humid air (outside) becomes dry when heated (inside).
- the_gipsy 5y agoOne downside of machine drying is that clothes deteriorate much faster.
- zemnmez 5y agoall the places I grew up in england, we would have a wooden rack (just some wooden slats attached to kind of metal hangers) with a small winch above the boiler in the boiler room. When the washing was done, my mum would put the washing on this rack, either between the slats or hung from hangers. It was obviously quite effective and efficient, but I don't miss it at all with a modern dryer. Having moved to the US recently though, I do miss integrated washer-dryers that I could set to complete by the time I woke up so I got to wake up to warm clothes for flights and meetings I was stressed about. They're totally absent in the US, and people who have used them give me weird anecdotes about how 'they don't dry clothes properly' or 'they don't let you go through as many clothes as fast' -- while the latter may be true, the washer-dryer means the entire process happens without you being there, like if you were asleep.
- tannhaeuser 5y agoCan't believe they don't have washer-dryer combos in US, of all countries. Another argument I heard is that they're not as long-lived as separate appliances, but mine (Bosch) is still going strong after 12 years or so (save for a plastic door handle I broke apart early on in anger when the thing wouldn't open unless waiting for a minute after program abort ;) Bit more expensive than a plain washer though for sure.
- elzbardico 5y agoIn average, americans, even if not overweight, are pretty big fellows. Try fitting lots of XXXL clothes in a Korean Washer-Drier that usually limits loads to some 8kg when using the drying cycle, even if the machine is rated to 12kg for washing, and you'll see the point of a separate drier.
- zemnmez 5y agoThis is the kind of thing I mean when I say "Americans give me weird anecdotes". 'Americans can't use washer-dryers because they're more fat than everyone else in the world' has got to be the strangest case of American exceptionalism I've ever had to read.
- type0 5y agoI don't like this type of racks, there are much better taller racks that hold more clothes and are sturdier for almost the same money. These small ones tend to break if you put heavy blankets on it.
- Khaine 5y agoIn Australia, most homes have, or used to have one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Hoist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Hoist
- anotherevan 5y agoWhen my brother-in-law emigrated to Ireland he ended up requesting that we send him one.
- Symbiote 5y agoOdd, as these very similar ones are very common in Ireland and Britain. https://www.woodies.ie/multistage-4-arm-50m-rotary-clothesline-1040006 https://www.woodies.ie/multistage-4-arm-50m-rotary-clothesli...
- cpach 5y agoInteresting! Hadn’t seen that design before. Where I live they tend to look like this: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Household-Essentials-Umbrella-Clothes-Dryer/10309895 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Household-Essentials-Umbrella-Clo...
- flipbrad 5y agoOur laundry loads generally split out between stuff you can put in the dryer without damaging it (much), and the rest gets hung on one of these racks. As soon as the weather improves, it generally all goes outside on a pair of lines strung across the garden, plus a rack (for smaller stuff more prone to falling off a line, e.g. socks). The drier was an absolute godsend with babies in the house. The rate at which we had to clean and dry baby clothes absolutely outstripped the clothes' ability to dry on a rack (and there's only so much of your life you'd want to devote to hanging up tiny socks, bibs etc...)
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoOne of the keyphrases is hidden elsewhere on this blog[0]: > Most significantly, I think, it means that we have been entirely able to get by without owning a car for the past three years. This, in my opinion, is probably the most significant difference between living in the USA and Europe (the other two being medical care and, when relevant, higher education). [0] https://alittlelifeineurope.com/2017/09/03/so-what-is-life-in-europe-like-anyway/ https://alittlelifeineurope.com/2017/09/03/so-what-is-life-i...
- dudul 5y agoIt's the difference between living in a city or in the country.
- sebazzz 5y agoThis particular model is from IKEA and indeed works very well.
- jmrm 5y agoIn the South of Europe is the most common way to dry clothes, normally in combination of other systems to other kind of way of sun drying the clothes. Drying machines are relegated to "emergencies" and to people who have too little time or are too lazy.
- bin_bash 5y agoI feel this is true for the entire continent, not just the South.
- Handytinge 5y agoIs it normal for Americans to assume that anything not from the US is "European"? Most of the world has clothes horses. They're a pretty common thing.
- drakonka 5y agoThis inspired me to finally get a drying rack after years of living in Sweden and hanging my laundry on doors.