Dehydrating our laundry

In my ongoing quest to reduce our electricity usage, here's the latest report:

January 2006:  1255 KWH used
January 2007:   793 KWH used

February 2006: 1169 KWH used
February 2007:  618 KWH used

That's a reduction of 42% (and about $80 off the two bills). Woohoo!

And that was even before the clothesline was installed.

I learned an odd thing last week: There is no such thing as an Energy Star clothes dryer. According to their web site, "ENERGY STAR does not label clothes dryers because most dryers use similar amounts of energy." Weird.

So I did something the other night that was probably pretty high on the dumbness scale. I drove 20 miles to pick up a clothes dryer, while it was lightly snowing and very windy, in a truck with very bad brakes. How many levels of "Duh" does that constitute?

Well, Lowe's might have beaten me on the "Duh" scale. They didn't have the dryer that we'd already paid for, and that they told us we could pick up on Wednesday. Did they call to tell me it didn't come in? No. Did they tell me when I got there? No. Did I know yet, 30 minutes after arriving? No. Did they know when it would arrive? Not a clue. Did I get a refund and take my business elsewhere? Absolutely.

We got essentially the same dryer, for $50 less, from the Sears store at the other end of the parking lot.

But the clothesline will be getting a workout whenever weather permits. We think it actually works faster than the dryer anyway.

And the best part about the clothesline? Now that we've got it nice and taut (thanks to a fence stretcher), whenever the wind blows hard enough, it creates just the right oscillation to make old Sci-Fi spaceship sound effects in our house. The first time I heard the high, gradually varying "woowoowoowoowoowoowoo" sound, I was pretty sure I'd look out in the back yard and see some skinny grayish dude with a big head and gigantic black eyes staring back at me. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was just the clothesline blowing in the wind. At least as far as I know...