By Bill Heaney
When my sons were much younger they used to call me Big Billy Boilwash. It was a bit of fun when they came across me in the wash house or hanging out clothes on the drying green.
Washing clothes used to be women’s work, but nowadays that one just won’t wash. It’s so last century.
Since it was our 52nd wedding anniversary this week, I can truly say I have been there, done that.
Thankfully, I have spent more time in the wash house than I have in the doghouse though.
And that’s why I keep my eyes on the weather reports on television (honest). It has nothing at all to do with Lucy Verasamy on ITV, pictured right.
As long as it’s not raining or deeply dark clouds are scudding down from Loch Lomond, once a breeze reaches around 15mph, we start seeing the prime conditions for outdoor drying, says Met Office meteorologist – and mother of teenagers – Jo Farrow
STV and Netweather forecaster Jo Farrow says we have become too reliant on tumble dryers as she backed a campaign to get people to dry their clothes outdoors all year round.
The annual energy bill for running the nation’s tumble dryers is estimated to be more than £1billion a year, with a new poll from laundry products firm Brabantia showing 57 per cent of us use a tumble dryer, running it for an average of 4hrs 12 minutes a week.
Across a year, this would equate to almost 220 hours of noisy and expensive whirring at a cost of around 30p an hour. Brabantia says the average tumble dryer user will spend £65.52 a year, which could be drastically reduced by drying clothes outdoors more often.
Farrow, a Met Offic meteorologist and mother of teenagers who has shunned the use of tumble dryers, said conditions do not need to be warm in order to dry clothes and urged us to focus on windspeed and not air temperature.
Brabantia’s research highlights a level of confusion around when we think it’s worth putting their washing outside. A fifth (22%) are incorrectly put off from drying outdoors if the temperature falls below 15°C and a similar number (18%) feel that clouds were a reason to avoid using the washing line.
Twan Verdonck from Brabantia said: “Our research suggests that more than one in every 10 people (11%) in the UK spend more than 10 hours a week doing the laundry, so it’s not an insignificant aspect of people’s lives.
We also estimate bill payers are spending around £1bn a year just on drying their laundry.
Brabantia has now launched a handy Drying Index in partnership with Netweather, which provides people with a daily score of how effective outdoor drying is for their area, based on localised weather conditions. To see if today is a good day to dry clothes outdoors, head to https://www.brabantia.com/uk/love-your-laundry
Interesting. I remember hanging out clothes and they came back in frozen!
You are not alone on that one. Occasionally I have taken trousers off the line which stood independently to attention.