Do you line dry your laundry?

[Teenyweeny]

What I'm learning is that I know a lot of slobs. 

[ladyknight1]

I'm proud of it too! 

[Sterling]

My husband wears nice button down shirts to work and I generally wear dresses.  I sort our laundry because I am not about to wash those with towels or jeans and have them torn up, dingy and covered in fuzz.  I generally do loads of work clothes, towels, jeans and work out stuff, and bedding.  I toss socks and undies in with the work clothes.  I wash pretty much everything cold and dry it all with my dryer.  A clothes line isn't practical here because of wind and dust.

My washer and dryer are in the kitchen at our current house but the house we are moving into has a very small entry area coming in from the garage that is a laundry/pantry and then leads into the kitchen.

[menley]

Homes in Texas don't have basements, so generally the washer and dryer are in a laundry room. All of the homes I've visited had the laundry room off to the side of the kitchen, and many were a sort of combination mudroom/laundry room off the entrance from the garage. Having a sink in the laundry room was very unusual when I was growing up, but it seems it's becoming more common as my friends renovate houses.

[Teenyweeny]

My husband wears nice button down shirts to work and I generally wear dresses.  I sort our laundry because I am not about to wash those with towels or jeans and have them torn up, dingy and covered in fuzz.  I generally do loads of work clothes, towels, jeans and work out stuff, and bedding.  I toss socks and undies in with the work clothes.  I wash pretty much everything cold and dry it all with my dryer.  A clothes line isn't practical here because of wind and dust.

My washer and dryer are in the kitchen at our current house but the house we are moving into has a very small entry area coming in from the garage that is a laundry/pantry and then leads into the kitchen.

I find the bolded interesting, and I think this must be the crux of the issue. I don't know how you could possibly tear clothes by washing them with other clothes. I think this must be a top loader vs front loader thing, because I've torn things in a top loader before, but I thought it was the machine's fault. Now I know it was my fault!

Fuzz might come off new things, but I'd never expect it to come off old (i.e. washed before) things, and IME it doesn't.

One or two of my cheaper things go dingy after a year or so, but then it's usually time for new stuff anyway (because the old ones were cheap and generally poorer quality). If I buy a bra for £8, I'm not gonna spend £XX (in my time, or in extra power/water/detergent) to launder it separately when it'll last about a year if I keep doing what I'm doing.

[demarco]

I separate laundry into 9 categories: dark sweaters, light sweaters, lint free black, linty darks, linty lights and mediums, bed linens, towels, "gummies" (clothes worn by people who just can't help dripping grease all over themselves and who attract other unbelievable, unidentifiable stains.), and "problems."  "Problems" include clothes that haven't been washed before and might run so are washed separately, clothes with stains that didn't come out in the gummy load and clothes that probably shouldn't be washed but I will wash anyway if I can only figure out how. 

My laundry is in the basement. Everyone sends his or her own clothes down the laundry chute. There are shelves across from the washer with nine baskets on them. A couple of times a week I take the clothes out of the chute and toss them into the appropriate baskets. I wash the contents of a particular basket, except for the problem basket,  when it is filled to overflowing because that's a full load in my washer. 

My system evolved. It sounds complicated but the process is simple. I probably spend less than five minutes a week sorting laundry.

Sorting isn't the problem. Things that bug me about laundry are the sheer volume of it and stowing it once it's done. There are only two of us and we wear most things a couple of times before washing them. I only change sheets every two weeks. It still seems like I do a lot of laundry. I have to carry the wash up two floors. I have some limitations and can't carry a whole basket so it seems like there's always more laundry to carry up.

[hobish]

 I hate how my clothes feel when they're line dried. I grew up with a laundry room in the dank basement that my mom was afraid to go in because of spiders, so pretty much everything was dried on a clothes line. It went from the deck to a tall tree and had a holder-upper thing in the middle so sheets wouldn't drag on the ground and wet clothes wouldn't hold everything down. Some things did come off of it smelling wonderful. Most of the time my jeans and towels came off of the clothes line crispy and stiff. I know line drying saves electricity/gas but i love my dryer. My laundry room is a wreck to see, but I love it.

[Ereine]

I'm in Finland and most apartments in my experience have the washer in bathroom, which some people in other countries seem to find strange. I've been thinking of buying a washing machine as they raised the price of using our laundry room but my bathroom is very small so I would have to buy a tiny one and the only electrical outlet is high on the wall across the room so I would have to use an extension cord so the the whole things seems kind of incovenient and possibly dangerous.

I usually only sort be temperature, sheets and towels go to 60 C and clothes to 40 C. I would have to do a lot of loads if I sorted the clothes, it's too expensive and I will only do full loads for environmental reasons. But I don't own any white clothes and most of my clothes are similar colors and materials and I haven't really noticed that jeans harm my other clothes. I do one load a week, two if I wash the sheets too.

[magicdomino]

I'm in Finland and most apartments in my experience have the washer in bathroom, which some people in other countries seem to find strange. I've been thinking of buying a washing machine as they raised the price of using our laundry room but my bathroom is very small so I would have to buy a tiny one and the only electrical outlet is high on the wall across the room so I would have to use an extension cord so the the whole things seems kind of incovenient and possibly dangerous.

I usually only sort be temperature, sheets and towels go to 60 C and clothes to 40 C. I would have to do a lot of loads if I sorted the clothes, it's too expensive and I will only do full loads for environmental reasons. But I don't own any white clothes and most of my clothes are similar colors and materials and I haven't really noticed that jeans harm my other clothes. I do one load a week, two if I wash the sheets too.

Actually, that does make sense to me.  Bathrooms are designed to handle water spills to some extent, and the plumbing is conveniently close. 

[SouthernBelle]

Regarding laundry detergents, in the US phosphates were removed in 1993 for environmental reasons.  Detergents with them were more effective.  I don't know if the removal of phosphates was universal world-wide.  But that may account for the difference in effectiveness from one part of the world to another.

[katycoo]

I think you actually just explained why people associate line drying with poverty- the expense of using the dryer would presumably not be an issue to an affluent person.  Or even paying to own a dryer.   Which doesn't cover the aspect of why not line dry if you chose to.

We line dry primarily due to cost.  Its not that we can't afford to, but rather than I choose to spend my money elsewhere.  Why waste money drying clothes when I live in a climate where they will dry themselves for free?  Using the dryer in good weather just seems silly to me.

[Katana_Geldar]

I usually don't sort my clothes unless I'm doing a white wash or a cat pee wash. Thankfully haven't had many of the latter for a while.

I've been working the last three weeks and we are overdue for a linen wash.

[sammycat]

...   I also noticed (when I lived abroad) that top loading washing machines are much harder on clothes (seriously, to the point of damaging the fabric over just a few washes), so maybe you have to be more careful because of that?

I don't know what kind of top loader you used, but I've never owned or used anything but a top loader.  I still have clothes that I wore in college (still in good condition!) and I'm in my seventies now.

I've only ever used a top loader as well, and never had a problem with them harming my clothes either.

I've used front loaders a few times when staying at hotels and it always strikes me as a pain having to virtually crouch on my knees to get all the clothes out.

[Katana_Geldar]

I would HATE using a front loader right now when I can barely bend.

[sammycat]

You don't sort by fabric type?  You'd wash blue jeans with delicates (like bras)?  Sorting's not that big of a deal.

Honestly, no. Never met anybody who does, either. I sort by colour if it's the first few times a particular item has been washed, but that's it.

Pod. I very rarely sort either. Occasionally if I've got several huge loads, I might sort darks from whites, or just do towels on their own (but that's mainly just make it easier when I hang them out), but other than that everything just gets lumped in together. It doesn't seem to harm or affect the clothes, as they're all in the same good condition no matter what else they're washed with.