I am all for saving money. And if you know me, you know that I used to spend plenty of time searching online for the best in-store deals.
And hang-drying clothes is one way to save money. You get to use the natural elements, aka the sun, to dry your clothes in the same amount of time as you would with an electric or gas dryer. Win for the environment, and a win for me.
In Cyprus, people don’t have dryers, only washing machines. And from August – November, drying our clothes was a cinch. You throw the clothes out on the drying rack, and in an hour or so, the clothes are fresh and dry.
But then came the rainy season. Drying time now took several days. And the moldy smell would seep leave a stench in your clothes, oozing out of our jackets – definitely an unpleasant smell.
I tried to hang our clothes on hangers inside, but it was no better. The musty smell would permeate through the walls, and then we had black mold growing on our white walls! I would scream at Linus to step away from the walls. And after wiping the walls with bleach solution and cracking the windows just enough so the mosquitos don’t come in, I had it up to my forehead in laundry. (Homes and apartments do not have window screens to keep out debris or blood leeching bugs, such as mosquitos, out.)
I did a search online, and found that the only way to save us would be to circulate the air with a fan. Right now, it’s “cold” in Cyprus (not Midwest cold), but cold enough on tiles that I don’t want our kids to catch anymore colds. So I’ll have to try that and see if this might be a solution to our clothes drying problem.
I shopped at Super Home Center for a small dehumidifier, but the cheapest one was 300 euros, and it was a monstrosity. That machine could probably suck out all the moisture in our entire apartment and put that onto our electricity bill in a week’s use.
So the salesperson said, you’ll have to use the space heater to dry you clothes. I thought, “Okay, do as the Cypriots do.” So I have placed our drying rack at the end of our small living room, which now makes it feel like we’ll living in an even tighter space. Once the weather starts to warm up, I’ll throw our clothes back out in the back patio and hopefully see some relief in my daily laundering experience.
Tomorrow I will share other electric devices we miss back home.
