4 Simple Ways to Make Doing Laundry More Environmentally Friendly
We all want (and deserve) to have clean clothes – and in a country where nearly every home is outfitted with both a washer and dryer, we are doing a lot of cleaning on a regular basis.
All this washing and drying adds up to an enormous amount of resources being used. On the flip side of this, making small changes in how you wash and dry your wardrobe can have a huge effect when these small changes become the norm.
Here are some simple tips to get you started. And don’t be shy about sharing them with your neighbors and friends!
Doing loads back to back saves energy. If you have more than one load of laundry to do, doing them back to back allows you to piggy back some of the heat generated and already present in the dryer for the second load! This means the second load uses less energy than the first. For this reason, it’s best to wait until you have 2 or more loads to do and then knock them all out one after the other to make the most (or rather, the least) of your energy consumption.
Clean that darn lint filter! It only takes a second but so many people get lazy with it. If you make it a habit to swipe the lint out of the filter after every usage, your dryer works more efficiently. Side bonus: in older machines, too much lint collected in the filter is a fire hazard, so don’t let it accumulate.
Keep the dryer out of a cold basement or garage. While it might be practical to put the washer and dryer in your basement or garage, if this areas get considerably cooler than the rest of the home – for instance, doing the winter – you are asking your dryer to work overtime! All that extra cold air is only making it work harder in order to dry your clothes. For less energy consumption, keep the machine in a room that’s heated – like in the kitchen or a utility closet.
Use a full load but don’t over stuff the washer. Instead of doing two small loads you should definitely use the space you have to do one full load instead. But this doesn’t mean you should do a full load and then some! If you put too much clothes in the washer or too little, you’re wasting energy.
Have you noticed anything all these tips have in common? By following them you will not just being doing a small part in making your environmental imprint that much smaller, but by reducing your energy needs you’ll be shaving dollars off of your power bill at the same time! I think that’s a side benefit we can all enjoy, too.
Contributed by DeAngelo Sade, a home and decor expert who currently writes for Wardrobe Closets. DeAngelo enjoys working with clients who not only want to redesign their home but make it operate more efficiently and environmentally friendly at the same time.