Walk the Line to Keep Fit and Lose Weight!

If you think a tumble dryer does a better job of drying your laundry than a rotary washing line you would be wrong. Your dryer does not do a better job - in fact, it increases your carbon footprint, damages you clothing with intense pressure and unnatural heat ... and it can even rob you of a chance to get healthier and lose unwanted weight for free! 

So what's the thinking behind the suggestion that using a rotary line in your garden can help you get fitter and lose weight? Well, a news story hit the headlines in 2016 when Karen Gatt, an overweight Australian woman, claimed she lost 70 kilos by walking around her rotary line. 

OK, it’s not really true that the washing line was solely responsible for her impressive weight loss - but it certainly played its part.  

She lost all that weight by walking around her rotary washing lines, cleaning out her cupboards and designing and following a healthy and easy to maintain eating plan.

You can check out her story on her website and maybe read her book The Clothes Line Diet if you want the details. One thing is certain, however: if you are manually hanging the entire family's (or even just your own) laundry on a rotary wash line, you are burning calories without even knowing it. 

One tip most health experts extend to overweight individuals is to 'move around.' Using a clothes line for drying your laundry is one of the best ways you can move yourself around. 

We would not advocate this method for keeping fit if it didn't come with inherent benefits for your clothes as well as the entire world that you are going to leave for your children.

An electric tumble dryer does a reasonable job at drying laundry - but how does it achieve this miracle? Well, worryingly it creates a footprint of about 2 kilos of Carbon Dioxide per load of laundry dried. Even if your load is lighter because you are single, how much do you think that adds up to in a year? In your lifetime? The only other way to reduce your carbon footprint in this sector is skimp on hygiene!! 

And don't forget power bills - at around 5.7 KW per hour, drying your clothes mechanically does kind of add considerably to those unwelcome electricity bills we all dread paying.

And all this because we don't choose the better option. Yes, there are seasons when you cannot possibly hang anything outside to dry, and yes, there are days you wish you had a few extra pairs of hands and feet and on such days, tumble drying is, dare we say, a blessing. But those are not the only days when you are too lazy to hang out your clothes. 

Well, each to their own, but if you ask us, the rotary washing line is the next best thing to a gym membership ... and it can certainly generate more cash to put in your piggy bank, rather than paying it out to your electricity provider.

About the clothes themselves: they will be happy if you stop torturing them with the immense pressure and the unnatural heat treatment that they undergo when they are machine dried in a tumble dryer. The individual fibres are damaged and they fray easily, not to mention lose their brilliance in a relatively shorter period of time. 

We don't notice these things because we are too busy, and who calculates how many times you get to wear a shirt, anyway? If you have grandparents, you might want to check out their old clothes collection. Do it, and you will be surprised at the quality of those frequently worn, line-dried clothes. 

Clothing dried naturally in the sun has a fresh smell that no machine can produce. Sunlight also 'bleaches' any remaining stain instead of setting them further in as machine drying does. 

Sun-dried clothes can appear very crisp and fresh and easier to iron than tumble dried ones. You need to see the difference to believe it. Unless ironing is absolutely essential (due to the nature of the social or professional occasion you will be wearing the dress to), clothes dried on rotary washing lines can be worn immediately after drying because they have none of the numerous creases that machine dried clothes invariably carry upon themselves.

To sum up ... you should be using rotary washing lines to preserve the environment, reduce your costs and, getting some exercise without working out! These sound like pretty good reasons to us, especially when you weigh in longer lasting and better smelling clothes, plus less ironing expenses for some.