I found an old pillow, looked a mess, but I thought its always worth a wash before chucking it. I put some bleach in the wash but it came out looking 'orrible, very discoloured. I left it outside thinking I'll chuck it later, but when I went out today, a weird thing had happened. All the yellow discoloration had vanished overnight - it was clean white.
How on earth did this happen? It had 4 rinses in the machine, so I cant imagine there was any Cl left in it. I certainly couldn't smell any. Puzzled.
Sunlight is the original bleach, and maybe that's how it cleared up the yellowing.
In the "olden days", laundry was spread out over the bushes so the sun could help clean up any leftover stains that didn't come out in the laundry. And all laundry was hung outside to dry, no matter what time of year. I can remember my mother bringing in stiffly frozen clothes from the line. It was funny, unless what you wanted to wear happened to be out on the line.
On the negative side, though, clothes, especially cotton ones, faded a lot over a period of time from being hung outdoors. But the laundry always smelled so good.
In many parts of the US, it gets below freezing in the winter. Hanging wet clothes on the line when it's 20F (approx -6C) with a wind blowing isn't much fun. Pulling them back off the line when they're stiff and frozen isn't fun, either. And 20F is pretty warm for a midwinter day in my part of the US.
It also wouldn't do me much good to hang my laundry out today....it's been raining for 18 hours. Not a hard rain, mind you, but a steady rain, Looks like it's going to continue for another 8-10 hours, too.
Oh, I see, you're in the UK. But here in the US hardly anyone hangs their wash out anymore, sadly; everything goes in the clothes dryer. It just isn't done, having a clothesline strung across the backyard, since Martha Stewart wouldn't do it. Ha.
I'm from the UK but I lived in California for a while. I hung my clothes out to dry in the Californian sunshine just once. They got terrible fade lines after just a couple of hours.
Back in the "gentle" UK weather, back to using the clothesline. Things smell much better, especially bedding. But I use the dryer in winter. Oh, and for pet bedding, because it's death to flea eggs.
Back to the original posting: chlorine bleach stays active in fabric for a long time. You can stop its action by using anti-chlor - see here:
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or you can usehydrogen peroxide, but I don't know how much. Sally H
It also isn't fun to struggle through three feet of snow on the ground with a full laundry basket, just to get TO the clothesline! And yes, it really does get that deep around here.
Yup, same here, it just dries when the weather dries. Just another cultural difference I guess. Virtually everyone hangs their stuff out here, and all of it. No-one worries.
No, it isn't because I've been known to do it! The sheets just smell so great afterwards. My mothers *always* used to put them out in the winter -- said the freezing made them even whiter (?) and this was in upstate NY, where 20F was normal winter temp. Of course, the line was off the porch to a tree, not out in the yard -- no shoveling needed. And once they are dry, they aren't all *that* stiff, just *cold*! Just know I loved the smell getting into bed after the sheets were washed.
In one of the intros to Martha's TV programs it shows her taking sheets off the line. She has also promoted hanging clothes and linens on the outside line on many of her shows. She recently did a show about linens, which she washed and hung on the outside line, bringing them in and using a Mangle to iron them. I do love her Mangle, My friends Mum has just given me her old Westinghouse Mangle. I adore it for doing yards and yards of fabric. I still hang everything except towels on an outside line and here in Canada -6C is springlike weather. I also have a line in the basement if it is raining or snowing heavily. It takes half the time out side on a sunny day than in the gas dryer. And everything is crisp, clean and almost pre-ironed. Things seem to last longer also. We are close to Michigan and many people still have outside lines because the cost to run a gas or electric dryer is so very expensive and expected to go very much higher still.
I'm so glad to hear that someone still does this! If our yard wasn't completely surrounded by trees we'd have a clothesline. But I've had WAY too many things ruined by bird droppings. And now my next-door neighbor keeps homing pigeons!! Can you imagine how lovely my sheets would be after being visited by his hundreds of birds? LOL Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati
There are many subdivisions here with HOAs that don't allow outdoor drying, but in mine, they do. IMO I like to see clothes drying on a line, it seems homey. I prefer using the dryer myself, since between the humidity here, along with our huge trees with their attendant bird populations, my laundry would never get dry, & be thoroughly pooped on. Our cars get it all the time. On down the street, where there are smaller & fewer trees, lots of people line-dry their laundry.
As usual, I'm a bad data point. I have a line strung across the yard of a house that has two fronts, no back, and very ritzy neighbors. (Who have a line, but use it only for bathing suits and towels.)
I never machine-dry anything -- unless I have to dry a king-size sheet indoors, and then I take it out as soon as it can finish drying while folded small enough to drape over a shower-curtain rod. (My late father-in-law installed a shower-curtain rod just for drying laundry on.)
I also use the dryer to hammer the wrinkles out of off-the-rack shirts, and to save labor when I want something thoroughly beaten and shaken. Such things stay in the dryer five minutes at most.
And sometimes I want to test or shrink yard goods. I did machine dry a hand-made garment once, so I want to make sure that anything I make can stand a little mis-handling. (Hand-made garment are nearly always dried on hangers.)
Much to my surprise, I can hang an entire load of wash on a small wooden dryer I bought as an emergency measure after moving out of a house that had a full basement strung with clotheslines, so I've never bought a good one. When it's too cold to hang laundry outside, the clothes dry very quickly when I set the rack over a furnace vent. And I've been known to load the rack, then carry it out onto the patio.
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