When I lived in a sharehouse with three other people, my biggest pet peeve (among many, so to call it my biggest is saying a lot!) was my housemates leaving up their laundry on a clothes horse for days on end. It would kill me every time I walked out my bedroom door and was greeted with a clothes horse-full of laundry hanging out in my lounge for its fourth day. Surely, it was more than dry.
I wish past me had seen — and then shared with them — this TikTok hack I stumbled upon recently. Though, living in Sydney with the current rain bomb, it is in that way perfectly timed.
Posted by New York-based professional organiser Caroline Solomon, the hack lets you dry clothes in 1-2 hours, instead of overnight — all with the help of a towel.
“We’re going to do the burrito method,” Solomon says in the clip. She then lays out a dry towel on the ground and places a wet shirt on top at one end. Then, she starts to roll both the shirt and the towel, like a burrito. Final step? Press down on the towel burrito with your knees to wring out the excess moisture from the shirt.
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Though the shirt will still be damp, it’ll dry a lot quicker on the hanging rack. Solomon does also mention that if you need it dry even quicker than within two hours, you can also add an extra step of blasting it with a hair dryer — which she says only took a minute. But let’s be real: with energy prices set to jump, you can probably just wait the two hours for your top to dry.
Here’s the vid:
@neat.caroline How to dry clothes without a dryer #hometips #fyp #laundrytips #laundryhacks #clothingtips #learnontiktok #laundryhack #laundry ♬ original sound Neat Caroline
Another hack I found for the burrito method is to roll the towel and top at a diagonal so that the twisting wrings the moisture out even more.
If you do have a dryer, though, another hack I found online is to throw a dry towel in with your wet clothes. The towel will work to absorb some of the moisture, making your items dry faster, and cutting down on your energy bill in the process. Remember to take out the towel after five minutes, if you’re drying just a few items, or 15 minutes for a full load.
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