Top tips for best drying on a rotary clothesline

Rotary clotheslines are fantastic for drying large quantities of laundry outdoors, saving on power and giving your clothes that lovely smell that they only get from being dried in the fresh air. But did you know that the way you hang your washing up can affect how efficiently it dries? We’ve got some top tips for getting the most out of your rotary clothesline.

• Firstly, make sure your clothesline is clean (especially if it hasn’t had much use over winter) so it doesn’t leave dirty marks on your washing.
• If you’re on the shorter side and you have a height-adjustable clothesline, position it so that your back and arms don’t get sore from reaching above your head with heavy, wet items.
• Hang your largest pieces of laundry, such as sheets and towels, near the centre of the clothesline, and work outwards by size, with the smallest items on the outside. Doing this will ensure that big items don’t shield smaller items from the wind, and everything will dry faster.
• Make sure you leave a small gap between each piece of laundry to allow good airflow through to the next layer.
• Give everything a good shake before you peg it up to eliminate as many creases as possible.
• Towels hold a lot of moisture and are therefore quite heavy when hanging on the line, which can cause them to sag and dry out of shape. Use three pegs - one on each corner and one in the middle - to help prevent this. If you don’t like the feel of line-dried towels, you can fluff them up for a few minutes in the dryer afterwards to give them a tumble-dried softness without using too much electricity.
• Hang tops upside-down and peg them by the waist at the side-seams to prevent unsightly peg marks and pointy shoulders.
• Hang pants by the ankles to help the thick waistband dry more quickly.
• If you have delicate items, you can use handkerchiefs beneath the pegs to protect the fabric.
• Direct sun will help to speed up the drying process as well as sanitising and whitening your laundry, but remember to turn coloured items inside-out to prevent fading.
• Lastly, make sure you have good quality, strong pegs to keep your laundry in place on extra-windy days!