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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

In Europe most people don't use cloth dryiers. You just hang the clothes on lines (usually on your balcony or in your bathroom if you live in a flat, or in your backyard if you live in a detached home). Clothes are dry the next day anyway, what's the rush?

I wonder if the UV from sun vs the longer time to dry results in less bacteria overall.

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> In Europe most people don't use cloth dryiers. You just hang the clothes on lines (usually on your balcony or in your bathroom if you live in a flat, or in your backyard if you live in a detached home). Clothes are dry the next day anyway, what's the rush?

Lived in the Czech Republic for two years and got to experience this. The result: my underwear felt like sandpaper compared to when I dried it with an actual dryer.

Yeah this is why line drying kinda sucks. Worse in the winter when you have dry skin and your stiff jeans are sanding your legs down. The solution is to tumble them in a dryer for 10 min on no heat or low to soften them up. If you dont have a dryer you can shake/tumble them by hand wrapped up in a bed sheet, laundry bag or basket. I did that a few times but it's laborious.

What is the difference between your air dried underwear and sandpaper? Sandpaper has one smooth side.

I use a clothesline in good weather. If it's a particularly calm day without a breeze to sort of fluff the clothes up a bit, then after they're dry, I'll toss them in the dryer on an air (non-heated) cycle for a few minutes, which takes care of it.

Solar UV helps a little, but UVC (180-280 nm) is necessary to thoroughly kill many bacteria and viruses (including COVID) and UVC doesn't reach the Earth because the atmosphere absorbs it.

UVB kills covid, and sunlight is a pretty good disinfectant in general.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/222/2/214/5841129?login...

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/study-reveals-ultravio...

I think the idea that sunlight doesn't breakdown the virus comes from people trying to "cure" cases of covid-19 with sunshine, which yeah, that's not going ot work.

UVB does work but it takes longer than UVC. So long that if you try to use it to disinfect skin, it's likely to give you sunburn before it kills much of the virus.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/based-on-science/covid-19-...

Contrast Far-UVC (200-235 nm), which kills the virus quickly and yet does not seem to cause skin or corneal damage, despite being more energetic than UVB.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-UVC

People often dry their clothes for several hours during the day to take advantage of the sun.

Not to mention UV will break down the fabric itself.

I'd expect a longer time spent "damp" probably increases bacterial growth.

> In Europe most people don't use cloth dryers

As a European, to the extent that this is true, it's only because they don't know what they're missing.

As a European who currently lives in the US, washes and line dries his clothes, I don’t think mainlanders are missing much. It IS convenient but I’d rather extend the clothes lifespan.

I (American) kind of learned accidentally how much longer clothes last air drying, from drying work clothes and some of my child's clothes, and then expanding from there.

I kind of grew up with line drying, and then stopped, and then started again.

It is pretty remarkable how much longer clothes last with line drying. I only machine dry heavy items that take awhile to dry and/or benefit from it specifically in terms of fluffing up or wrinkling.

I'm tempted to get a heat pump dryer but I'm worried about the size of the ones that are available near me.

Dryers can be set to dry on a lower temperature. Sure it takes 30 minutes longer but clothes last a lot longer. Best of both worlds IMHO.

German here, happy owner of a heat punp drier. To me it's the same as a dishwasher. Something you don't think you'd need until you have it.

And once little people enter the equation, having a drier is a God's end. Modern driers are also gentler on the clothes than the hot air jets of yore.

This is how it was in the US too growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, everyone had a clothes line in their yard. But by the late 1980s it seemed everyone started getting clothes dryers.

Clotheslines were not the norm in the 1970s US in my experience. Dryers, like dishwashers, took longer to be broadly adopted than other major appliances but they were hardly uncommon in the 1970s or even earlier.

Depends on where you lived. In rural areas, or in older city apartments, yes perhaps. My parents house was built in a subdivision in the 1960s and had an electric clothes dryer on day one.

My mom still hangs clothes on clothesline. I used to hate it when she would hang towels on the line because they would get hard. I also grew up wearing cloth diapers. We grew up poor.

I live in the US and during warm weather hang my laundry outside on a clothesline to dry. I live in a suburb and so have a backyard for this. Living in an apartment would make this unfeasible. The area I live in has quite a lot of cool or rainy days so that does limit it to about 1/3 of the year.

Hang drying increases household dust. Clothes dryers' mechanical motion is great at removing lint from clothes as an unintended consequence.

And it also makes them wonderfully soft <3 And smooth so they don't have to be ironed. I hate the power it takes but it's worth it over hang drying IMO.

Wait what? Who in the EU has the time to hang clothes out? That is like a 15x time difference between a dryer and hanging clothes out on a line.

People like you and the GP, who generalize across a huge continent/trade block with a wide variety of climates, living arrangements and wealth.

People like us do what?

You plan by doing laundry ahead of time. When you have a washer and dryer you get spoiled with ~2hr wash and dry times allowing you to wash needed clothes on the day you need them. If you didn't have that luxury then you would plan ahead. I lived without a dryer for a few years and did exactly that, wash the day before and hang dry.

Sure, I still plan abead of time, but it still takes more time. I don’t dry all of my washing in the dryer, the delicates are hung. But I do have better things to do than spend hours on laundry weekly.

> But I do have better things to do than spend hours on laundry weekly.

You dont have to sit and watch the laundry dry, it does that on its own ;-) Cheekiness aside, it adds maybe 10-15 minutes for hanging up but not hours unless you have to hike to some mountain top or whatever. You still have to fold so it adds little to that when taking them down from the line.

15 minutes per wash is an hour, minute of transfering between one cylinder to the other one is 15x less. Multiply this by 4 washes, and we’ve spent an hour instead of 4 minutes.

I've learned to stop and appreciate the little mind numbing things in life: Walk to local stores, shops, markets, restaurants, Washing dishes by hand, cleaning up house routine, doing laundry. I've got patience. Lets me stop and think about stuff. Or hell, put tunes on the bluetooth speaker.

Anyway, best thing I ever had was a Mabler horizontal washer/dryer allinone unit in an old basement studio. It was small as hell and could handle everything but my winter quilt. Used cold water to condense the moisture and was closed loop. Would periodically discharge warm water into sink via long hose. I think it was designed for RVs and plugged into a 120v socket.

I would much rather spend time with my child, spouse or pet instead.

Not in the EU, but I hang dry about 1/3 of my laundry because it's stuff I don't want in the drier. Wife's bras, cycling kit, wool, dress shirts (less wrinkly when hung vs machine dried). That said, it's just the two of us, when the kid was at home, I damn near needed a commercial drier to keep up with all the stinky sports stuff and whatnot.

I do that, just hang it inside though

I do use a clothes rack inside for some things like merino wool that dry easily and are relatively delicate.

I hang dry my shirts right inside my closet, but humidity isn’t a concern as it’s low in the winter and controlled by A/C in the summer. It takes less time to hang dry since I don’t need to put the shirts in the dryer and then take them out and hang them up.

All other clothing is washed cold and tumble dried on low, towels and bedding is washed and dried on hot.

Its not labor time. You put them out in the afternoon they are ready the next day, most seasons. If sun can see them might be a couple of hours, hang inside out so colours don't fade. Also quicker to iron.

It's something that takes 15 minutes of work once a week. The rest happens in the background without your involvement.

Negligible benefits.

And the machine takes space in small European flats.

Single spotted. With kids, you're doing laundry every day.

I am married. No kids tho.

But I was a kid, and we only did laundry on saturdays. What's the point of doing it daily? Do you not have 7 sets of clothes for everybody?

It’s hard with little kids. Do you leave clothes covered in spills and accidents for 7 days?

Kid wets the bed? You’re washing bedding.

Drink on the couch? In go the pillows and cushion covers.

to be fair, this occurs during a short period. an 8 year old won’t be pissing their bed every week for example, or blowing out their diaper. Dryer is a godsend during those early years though!

Maybe, maybe not. You get what you get with kids.

My 7 year old just had an accident today.

I don’t really remember potty training my oldest, it just kind of happened one day. He’s never even wet the bed.

My youngest? Well, I’m confident he’ll have it figured out before high school.

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