The joys of clothes pegs

[watervole]

Given that I'm not dougs, this is  totally clean and worksafe!

Looks like I'm not the only one who's virtually given up using their tumble dryer.

This is from today's Independant:

Pegs vs dryers

One of this year's biggest green success stories isn't a new solar-powered gadget or a carbon-neutral car. It's the clothes peg, enjoying soaring sales thanks to a backlash against tumble dryers. Between January and April this year, Asda sold more than 1.2 million pegs – up 1,400 per cent on the same period the previous year. Sales of washing lines and rotary dryers are also up 147 per cent. People are realising that, while tumble dryers may be convenient, they are carbon criminals. According to the Energy Saving Trust, just one use of a tumble dryer generates 1.5kg of carbon dioxide, which is enough to fill 150 balloons. Households that use a tumble dryer every time they put a wash on emit about 140kg of extra carbon dioxide a year, and the electricity used to power them could cost more than £70. According to eco-auditor Donnachadh McCarthy, "nobody has a real need for tumble dryers", which helps to explain why clothes pegs are selling so well.

Comments

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

I've never owned a tumble drier so that's one more way I can't save the planet and my purse. I have a clothes horse for when it's raining.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'd call it one way you're *already* helping.

[ex-the-major316.livejournal.com]

I brought some clothes pegs recently. Odd little things not the traditional two pieces of wood with a spring in the middle. It's just one piece of plastic.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

This is the expected NSFW comment. When I saw the subject line I instantly guessed, correctly, the nature of your post; I just as instantly formulated an unsuitable reply. And then I read the content and discovered that you'd beaten me to it! Bah.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

I occasionally use the tumble driers at the launderette, but they're so inefficient that it has to be a real ohgrudmustgetthisdrynow situation. Which very rarely arises for someone who never has to dress up to go anywhere.

But I can't claim to possess any clothes pegs either, not having anywhere outside to hang washing up. I have to make do with clothes horse in lounge. Fortunately there's just the one of me, because a sackful of laundry can take a long while to dry in winter.

[artw.livejournal.com]

Ours is dried in the garage where the boiler is. But if I had a young family and a small home a tumble dryer would be useful all right.

[oreouk.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought - I always expected having kids would push me upgrade from hanging the laundry from lines strung in our (very high ceilinged) kitchen to getting a drier, but 6 years down the line and I still don't. I consider it occasionally but the impetus has not yet overcome the procrastination.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Keep right on procrastinating!

[fifitrix.livejournal.com]

We have one and I must admit it is really useful in the winter. In the summer we have a whirlygig in the garden. We also have clothes horses in the house for all year round, but there are somethings that are better dried in the tumbler.

Towels are better done in the tumbler, as are pajamas in winter (getting into bed with tumbler warm pajamas is one of my totally guilty pleasures.)

I wonder how many trees you'd need to plant to offset a tumble dryer... probably loads I'm thinking.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

tumbler warm pajamas are absolute heaven! I really can't give up my tumbler, I just can't. I'm doing without a car, I don't leave my TV on standby, I spend my vacations at home and I'm a vegetarian. Doesn't all that offset the tumbler use even a little bitty bit?

And if it ever breaks down, I vow to replace it with the most energy efficient one I can find, even though that does cost more than three times as much as a regular one.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Towels do fluff nicely in the tumbler, but I've gotten used to them dried on the line now.

Carbon offset is a bit of a con trick. The very short explanation is that there is carbon that is part of the natural cycle and fossil carbon. No matter what you try and offset, fossil carbon is still an addition to the system.

[raspberryfool.livejournal.com]

At home i use my dad's twin-tub, it has a spin-dryer which does an adequate job of removing the water from clothes. The clothes then go onto the inside clothes line that hangs in the kitchen, a radiator, or outside on the line. Old-fashioned technology but it works well.

Clothes pegs are also useful for hanging prints to dry and keeping food packets closed.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Spin dryers are very useful.

I use clothes pegs for plastic bags as well, and also for hanging up pairs of rubber gloves.