Summer is well gone, and your machine is no longer full of bikinis and flowy dresses, but rather packed full of heavy jeans and warm jumpers! However, when it comes to drying these items, we can well understand that you are not too excited at the prospect of heading out into the cold to hang them out on the clothes line in your back yard, and they often end up on a clothes horse in your bedroom…. However, it is not recommended that you dry your laundry indoors. Find out why…..
Drying your clothes indoors leads to mould
In Winter 2011, Scottish researchers in the Mackintosh School of Architecture analysed the interiors of 100 homes. In 87% of houses, people dried their clothes indoors when the weather was cold, often leaving them hanging on the radiators. The researchers observed that many of these houses had mould. According to the results, on laundry days, the humidity levels in the houses increased by 30%. This percentage was higher still in smaller homes, which had more problems in terms of evaporation.
Asthma, headaches and respiratory allergies in store
The ideal humidity levels are between 40 and 50%. Anything below, and the dry air irritates respiratory passages, and anything above promotes the development of mould and attracts mites. Breathing in mould can aggravate allergies and asthma, and can even lead to infections, headaches and nausea.
So how should you dry your clothes in Winter?
The ideal would be to continue doing as you did when the weather was fine, drying your clothes outside. What’s more, the clothes will be permeated with a natural molecule present in fresh air, which acts as a natural disinfectant and destroys bad bacteria. Of course, depending on where you live, and on the facilities you have outdoors, it can be more difficult to follow this rule. If you really can’t find a way to dry your clothes outside, try to hang them near large open windows. Otherwise, there is a radical solution, which isn’t very eco-friendly or cost effective: the tumble dryer….
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