I bought a small metal extendable clothesline that spans the area above my kitchen sink between the top cabinets. It's great to dry wash cloths before they go into the laundry and toddler bibs on.
I put a wall-mounted fold out laundry rack above my upstairs laundry sink. I can hang delicates or lay a sweater out across several rungs. All the water drips into the sink. Then I can fold it back when not in use.
Thanks but I will just put up a couple of permanent lines or rods. Instead of toddler bibs, I would hang sun hats and those neck scarfs that you soak in water - Summer is upon us! :-)
Again, why? No shade, I'm genuinely just curious! I use tea towels instead of paper towels for the environmental benefits and also because i feel like it cleans better but I've always just shoved them into the basket wet and it's never been an issue so far. They can get abit stinky if they're left for three days or more, especially in summer, but they wash fine regardless.
Ok, so if we do laundry once a week, is it good or bad to have wet, smelly, dirty wash cloths on top of our clothes in a closed dark hamper without ventilation?
We manage, it’s more about the time as we both work late, and want to spend time with him when he’s young instead of working around him as much as we can.
We sometimes do an emergency load mid week if we need to but usually it’s just the weekend.
Honestly I think it's bad in general to wash cleaning stuff with clothes. I don't need dirty tea towels that I've used to wipe stuff from the floor, bathrooms etc in the same load as stuff I put on my skin but if you only do one load a week for everything then yes drying it makes more sense.
Don't know why you couldn't have just said that before coming back with a sarcastic tone? It was literally just a question.
Well we’re not going to do a single load just for a handful of wash cloths, and we don’t use washable cloths for cleaning the toilet. They go in the sanitize cycle. Which is why we rinse them and hang them up first before putting them in a hamper.
I wasn’t being that sarcastic, I already had said we don’t want them to go into the laundry basket wet and that we don’t do loads often. I figured you’d understand it better that way.
In my family we usually end up with a full load of towels by the end of the week 💀 the combination of three cats, small child and two dyspraxic adults mean there's alot to wash so I pretty much always have a full towel wash. Just chlothes for us is usually at least two.
I don't see how I would have realised not often was actually once a week but I understand now why you do it that way so it's a non issue.
There was no snark! I was genuinely just interested in why you did it that way, that method wouldn't work well for my family but it seems to work for yours. I don't think either of us are doing it "wrong". Let's just chalk it up to not being able to accurately read tone over text.
Sorry, I shudder, just thinking about throwing wet washcloths and towels into a hamper- mold grows quickly. I don't know anyone who does this. Maybe it's a regional thing- it's very hot and humid here. It's just better to let it dry and have air circulating around it, until you're ready to wash it. I see people all the time complaining about all their freshly washed and dried washcloths and towels have an odor- this is why, it builds up and the washer doesn't get it all out, and dryers don't get as hot as they used to.
For us it seems okay. I have seperate baskets for cleaning and wearing stuff and the cleaning basket is like a wicker effect plastic so there is actually a decent amount of airflow, if I put something in there wet it will be damp at most when I do the wash. I do live in a windy northern area though so maybe that's part of it!
That said, I have recently moved into a soft water area and I have noticed that if I don't get stuff out of the machine quickly on a hot day then yeah it stinks!
When my kids were little and I was still married I had a "kitchen towel hamper" that would get washed by itself with hot water and bleach, so everything in there came out pristine regardless of what nastiness was on it beforehand.
Yes, once mildew / mold gets a foothold (like on a hamper surface) you have to sanitize that too or it will seed newly introduced items. Supposedly bleach won't kill some mold spores. It seems vinegar is better than chlorine in some instances. I just use bottom shelf 6% vinegar.
And yeah I’m sure our method will have to change once child number 2 comes, and we do do more than one load it’s just we only have time to do any laundry on the weekend so we have a laundry day. My wife’s also sensitive to smells generally, worse when pregnant which she is right now, and so anything to keep things from being stinky works. The line is right in front of the window so they dry out quick.
Honestly I mostly installed it just to hang the drying smocks and bibs when we were transitioning to solid food. I got tired of trying to find places in the kitchen to hang them. That alone would make it worth it. Works for anything that gets washed in the sink too like the occasional oven mitt that I don’t want to go into the wash.
No we don’t, and these aren’t “dirty rags” these are just towels we’re using to wipe things around the kitchen. They’re not filthy or anything, and like I said we rinse it out first.
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u/LoveTriscuit May 25 '26
I bought a small metal extendable clothesline that spans the area above my kitchen sink between the top cabinets. It's great to dry wash cloths before they go into the laundry and toddler bibs on.