Going a Little Greener: Laundry Drying Rack

my 11 dollar walmart laundry drying rack

The great thing about living a more eco-friendly lifestyle is that you usually find yourself saving money too. Since I live in an apartment, I do not have the luxury of an in-home washer and dryer. When I need to do laundry I have to pay 2 bucks a load to wash and "dry" my clothes. Because I live in a college town, my apartment managers have this "don'e expect me to actually do my job" attitude. The sidewalks don't get shoveled or salted in the wintertime, light bulbs in hallways don't get replaced in a timely manner if at all and the clothes dryers in the basement laundry are, well, crap. I've gotten really tired of paying for the dryer to beat up my clothes and not dry them at the same time. When clothes come out of the dryer they are supposed to be dry. When I did the math, I figured I was tossing about 4 dollars worth of quarters every two weeks for the damn driers not to dry my clothes. So this weekend I bought a laundry drying rack. I figure I'd let mother nature dry my clothes for me. Its definitely as cheap as you can get, it actually gets your clothes dry (even if you have to be a little more patient) and is a lot gentler on your fabrics, making them last longer. Think about all the times you've had to clean out the lint trap. All that lint is bits of fabric getting rubbed off your clothes as the dryer spins the life out of them-literally!

I've been thinking about getting a laundry drying rack for some time but I had no idea how much they cost and how much space one would take up in my tiny apartment. But I found this one at wal-mart for 11 dollars and thought it was worth a try. I got it home and took it out and found it to be made of cheap pine and the dowels were a bit too large to fit perfectly in their assigned holes. Did I mention that it didn't come with assembly instructions?  After I threw a mini temper tantrum and tossed a few parts across the room, Greg took 10 minutes out of his precious superbowl watching time to put this laundry drying rack together for me. Lets just say he is much better at assembly and troubleshooting than I and I hope he knows how wonderful I think he is :) It doesn't take up a whole lot of room and it collapsible but its not the best quality. If I had the extra cash to spend I would have saved up and bought a nicer one here.

using every possible hangable surface in my apartment to dry my laundry

I tried it out Monday night and am pretty happy with it. Most of the stuff I hung up at around 8pm last night were dry yesterday morning with the exception of a few heavier t-shirts. I found that not large enough to dry two loads so I will have to remember to stagger my laundry loads instead of trying to get all my laundry done in one day. As I write this I have towels hanging all over the apartment because I wasn't smart enough to realize I can't dry more than one load at a time on the rack. Work clothes have to be wrinkle free and the first thing I found out about the drying rack is that although it gets most things dry overnight, it doesn't magically press them over night for you. It doesn't matter if some of the t-shirts, socks and underwear have a few wrinkles in them but we probably shouldn't walk into work looking like we slept under a bridge the night before. I am already paraniod enough with my natural deodorant experiements and all.