Planning ahead to do Laundry

Now that I am consciously being careful with energy usage and saving money, I find that I have to plan when to do laundry according to the weather.  I have been using my dryer for years and did laundry whenever, no matter what the weather.  No more.

In Iowa we are supposed to get a lot of rain tomorrow and Monday.  We have been watching the news as many areas of our state are facing flooding and the last thing we need is a lot of heavy storms.  People are watching levees and they are getting nervous. 

My DH was mowing the lawn this morning and I was weeding, when it dawned on me that I do laundry on Monday and with what they are reporting there is no way I will be able to hang out clothes on my normal wash day.  Today was hot, sunny and a breeze was blowing, so I put in a load of laundry, and then another and another and kept on going.  I hung all the clothes on the line, including dress shirts and my son's casual cargo pants. Everything came out soft, wonderful smelling and the dress clothes looked like they had come out of a dryer.  I am so sold on hanging clothes on the line that I will find it hard to stop when winter comes.

I always wash towels and bedding on a separate day so if the weather is nice on Tuesday I will wash the bedding and towels.  For the first time I am going to hang towels on the line and just when they are about dry I will throw them in the dryer to fluff them up and soften them.

I really believe that on my old wash days my dryer would run for at least 4 hours in order to get all the clothes dry. 

My DH has kept track of our utility usage going back to 2003 so I plan to look at next month's utility bill and compare it to the previous Julys to see where we are coming in on our electrical usage.  It will be interesting to see how much electricity was wasted on using a dryer.  If it is a lot, I may just have him hang a line in the basement to dry some of the clothes this winter.