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It's the very first day of Frugal August!
Today's focus: clothes dryers. Sounds boring, I know. But it's the middle of summer, it's freakin' HOT outside, and yet I'm spending hard-earned cashola to HEAT AIR. What's wrong with this picture?
To back this gut feeling that that clothes dryer really was using up more than a negligible amount of energy, I took a stroll over to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (okay, fine, I just Googled "clothes dryer energy use," but taking a stroll sounds so much more delightful). According to their 2011 statistics, clothes dryers account for 4% of U.S. residential electricity consumption. That's 57 BILLION kilowatthours (kWh). Just to put that in perspective, the same site has information on the average U.S. nuclear power plant production which says the average nuke plant generates about 12.2 billion kWh. Do the math - we're running the equivalent of almost FIVE NUCLEAR REACTORS just to DRY CLOTHES in this country. And that's only considering residential dryer usage. What about laundromats or institutions drying clothes? What about all the people using gas dryers? Holy cow - that's a bunch of energy to do something the sun does for FREE!!!
Today's focus: clothes dryers. Sounds boring, I know. But it's the middle of summer, it's freakin' HOT outside, and yet I'm spending hard-earned cashola to HEAT AIR. What's wrong with this picture?
To back this gut feeling that that clothes dryer really was using up more than a negligible amount of energy, I took a stroll over to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (okay, fine, I just Googled "clothes dryer energy use," but taking a stroll sounds so much more delightful). According to their 2011 statistics, clothes dryers account for 4% of U.S. residential electricity consumption. That's 57 BILLION kilowatthours (kWh). Just to put that in perspective, the same site has information on the average U.S. nuclear power plant production which says the average nuke plant generates about 12.2 billion kWh. Do the math - we're running the equivalent of almost FIVE NUCLEAR REACTORS just to DRY CLOTHES in this country. And that's only considering residential dryer usage. What about laundromats or institutions drying clothes? What about all the people using gas dryers? Holy cow - that's a bunch of energy to do something the sun does for FREE!!!
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Alrighty, with frugality first and foremost in my mind, I took a trip to Lowe's. First find: retractable clothes line, maximum of 49', priced at $14.98. Seemingly makes a bit of sense, except I'd really planned on using our newly-constructed pergola as my clothes line support structure, which would mean I'd need two of these to put one on each side of the pergola, and that would be $30, which is probably most of my electricity cost for the year to run the darn dryer. Not terribly frugal.
Total for two separate lines, feasibly up to 50' in length each (though I don't have room for that): $15.32. Half of what I would have spent for the fancy retractable ones. I should note that I could easily have not bought the carabiners and just tied the line to the lag bolts, but I want to be able to take this down when company comes over. I'd also like to note that Lowe's doesn't sell clothespins. I find that odd, but Target had a pack of 50 for $1.79, and it was on the way home so I don't feel like I had to burn any extra dinosaurs to get them.
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Took about 8 minutes to drill the pilot holes for the lag bolts, put in the lag bolts, and tie some clothesline to some carabiners. I still have about 75' of line left, and may do the other two sides of the pergola later.
Took about five minutes to hang everything from a wet load of laundry up. It also felt pretty pleasant, standing outside, hanging up clothes, enjoying the sun. Besides, I'm banned from TV for the month, so what else was I supposed to do tonight?