Frugal Experiment: Can I Live Without a Clothes Dryer?

I feel I must state upfront that this experiment was NOT voluntary.

When we built our house 11 years ago, we somehow chose an Amana washing machine and gas dryer. Much to our dismay, we learned several years later that Amana is infamous among repairmen for its crappy washing machines and dryers. Yipee.

Our washer died about a year ago. We researched the newer front loaders, picked one and bought it at Best Buy, put it on a Best Buy card, reaped the rewards from the card and paid it off the next month. Yes, sometimes that does work. At the time, we did not see the point of buying a new dryer since ours was working fine and the matching dryer was very expensive (like $1300 expensive). It was worth it for us to upgrade to the front load washer because the efficiency was such an improvement. While there have been some improvements in dryer efficiency, it is not enough to warrant tossing a working appliance just for an upgrade.

Now, you would think we would have realized that the writing was on the wall for our dryer, since most dryers apparently (according to my trusty Internet research) have a useful life of 8-10 years and we are already into our 11th year, but no. I, for one, did not even think about it. Kind of short sighted, being as we decided that we would redo our laundry room (which is also our entrance from the garage) once we got the matching dryer because they can stack on top of each other and allow us to change things around to gain some more room.

Anyhoo... I heard an odd noise when the dryer was running one day, mentioned it to my husband a few days later and by the end of that day the dryer was dead. It appears to be the motor. So, do we replace the motor and press forward or do we call it done and get the dryer that matches our washer and redo the room as planned? Who knows, but at that immediate moment all I knew was that our laundry needed to be dried. And we had to come up with a temporary solution, since we are a family of six and go through an impressive amount of laundry in a week.

The day the dryer died we managed to keep pressing the button and got it to go for 15 minutes at a time. We were able to dry all but one load before it officially could no longer be resuscitated. The next morning, I showed up at my mother-in-law's with two kids for her daycare (as usual) and one load of dark clothes to be dried (not so usual). She graciously not only dried but also ironed EVERYTHING. That is what she does. When I got home that night, our family layed out the clothes on the table and ooh-ed and aaahhh-ed over how beautiful the clothes all looked.

Since I had not anticipated the dryer dying that day, I had not used any fabric softener, so I was very grateful that we were able to dry the clothes in a dryer. Going forward, I knew if I could find somewhere to hang things at our house, I would be OK for a while, since we already had fabric softener. Lots of people offered to let us do laundry at their houses, but that seemed to be a time consuming (and energy consuming for them) plan. I preferred to just work it out at home.

The next laundry day, I gathered up the laundry, put in the fabric softener and wondered what on Earth I was going to do once the load was done. Then it struck me - our bed! Our bed is a king size canopy bed, so the frame runs all around the top of the bed. Perfect for hanging clothes! AND there is a ceiling fan in the room, so we can get some wind going to help out.

I hauled up the laundry and started hanging things up.

I must say that I was grateful we already had our front load washing machine, because that spins clothes really dry - no excess water. That goes a long way to drying things quickly. I had to flip things around after an hour or so, but everything was mostly dry by bedtime. I was able to work in two loads worth of clothes on the canopy, on a drying grid we already had and by draping things over laundry baskets to dry. I need to iron most things just to soften them up a bit and get out the wrinkles. I hate ironing, so that part is not my favorite, but I will live.

We have been doing laundry that way for over a week now. We still need to get out there and find the best deal and that matching dryer. On the list are scratch and dent places, Best Buy, Lowes, Home Depot and Sears. I cannot bring myself to wash towels and let them air dry - crunch! But we are running out of towels, so I will either have to brave it or show up at a friend's door with a load of wet towels to be dried.

My conclusion? Yes, I can live without a clothes dryer. It is less efficient for me, but it is not that bad. We will replace our dryer once we find a good deal, but we will be hanging a clothes line outside next year (something we have talked about for two summers) and I have learned which of my clothes dries quickly and which do not. I am trying to wear the lower maintenance clothes more often. I also have realized that not everything needs to be washed every time it is used (jeans, place mats without spills, etc.).

I can tell you (no experiment necessary) that I would NOT want to live without a washing machine!