This Common Laundry Mistake Keeps Your Clothes Wet For Longer

I’m definitely a winter person, but even I have to admit the colder months spell disaster for my laundry routine. 

Like a lot of households in the UK, my home doesn’t have a dryer. And while I’ve got a pretty decent clothes horse, it’s just not big enough to hold all my washing and it still takes days to get them properly dry. 

If you’re in the same boat, experts at fabric conditioner company Lenor say a common laundry practice can make the process even longer ― even if you DO have a dryer.

What laundry mistake keeps my clothes sodden?

“Before you consider finding the best way to dry clothes indoors in winter, you need to start with looking at your load,” Lenor says. 

Overfilling the drum will squash all your items together, meaning they’ll be less able to shed their excess water at the end of the wash. 

Additionally, all the extra moisture will be trapped in the crowded folds of their material. 

Southern Living points out that the added weight in the drum can even tire out your appliance, potentially shortening its lifespan.

Any other drying advice?

You should give “laundry a good spin and an extra shake when removing it from the washing machine to extract surplus water and damp,” Lenor adds, advising we use our machine’s fastest spin cycle whenever possible.

Hanging your clothes up to dry as soon as possible after removing them from your washing machine can help too. 

If, like me, you don’t have enough space to hang all the laundry you get through in a week, the fabric softener company says you can create some using curtain rods. 

“Hang an extra shower curtain rod along the top of your bathtub/shower area, and you’ve instantly got a hidden indoor spot to do some drying,” they say. 

I think I’ll give that a go...