How to Dry Your Clothes During the Winter Without a Dryer
Last Updated: Apr 7, 2025Homeowners across the United States are collectively throwing away over 4 billion dollars annually to dry their clothes. Unfortunately, clothes dryers are one of the more energy-intensive appliances in the home. They often use as much energy as your refrigerator, clothes washer, and dishwasher combined. This simple energy use calculator shows that a 3,000-watt clothes dryer used on an average of one hour per day could cost your household $110 each year.
The sun and wind are free, and air drying your clothes is a simple strategy that will radically reduce your household energy bills. During the warmer months of the year, clothes will generally air dry outside in about the same amount of time that it takes you to dry a load of laundry. However, during the winter, a pair of recently washed jeans might turn to ice if you attempt to hang them outside to dry when temperatures are well below freezing.
While cold and wet winter months create a challenge for families seeking to live without a clothes dryer, it is possible to avoid the energy-intensive tumble dryer during the winter. Below, we offer a few hints and a few innovative products to help you continue to air dry your clothes during the wintertime.
Table of Contents
- Do You Need Heat to Dry Clothes?
- Indoor Clothes Hanging Tips
- A Few Innovative Products
Do You Need Heat to Dry Clothes?
Heat is not the only factor in the drying of clothes. While a warm summer day might seem perfect to dry bed sheets and blankets quickly, other factors contribute to the science of air-drying your clothes.
Clothes Drying With Precipitation and Humidity
It is hard to dry your clothes if it is raining or snowing. However, high levels of humidity in the air will also significantly lengthen the overall drying period. In many cases, a cold and dry winter day might dry your clothes quicker than those warm and humid dog days of summer.
Clothes Drying With The Sun
Also known as sunshine, solar radiation is important for drying clothes as it provides a source of free energy to evaporate the water in your clothes. While warmer air temperatures can help dry clothes, solar radiation is the most effective way to evaporate water when hanging your clothes to dry.
Clothes Drying With With Wind
The wind is another essential element for effective clothes drying as it will whisk away the humid air around your clothes. On the contrary, during still and windless days, the humid air will saturate around your clothes, and drying will take much longer.
Tip: It may seem challenging to dry clothes outside around the freezing mark, but given enough time, your clothes will dry!
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
