Drying Laundry Indoors Without Soaking the Room

If you have no outside space, no dryer, or a winter that will not cooperate, the airer comes out. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you are honest about the arithmetic: the water that was in the clothes has to go somewhere, and indoors it goes into the room.

The rules that actually matter

• Dry in one room, with the door shut and a window cracked or the extractor running. Contain it rather than letting it drift through the flat.
• Never dry over a radiator in a closed room. You are heating water into the air as fast as the radiator can manage, with nowhere for it to go.
• Spin harder before it comes out of the machine. A faster final spin is the cheapest dehumidifier you own — the water goes down the drain instead of into your bedroom.
• Give it space. A tightly packed airer dries slowly, and slow drying is what puts the room at high humidity for hours instead of a while.
• If you run a dehumidifier, put it in the same closed room as the airer. That is the one place it is unambiguously earning its electricity.

Vent the dryer, if it vents

A vented tumble dryer that exhausts into the room is an indoor airer with a fan. EPA lists venting dryers to the outside among its basic moisture controls, alongside bathroom extraction (EPA, Ten Things You Should Know about Mold). Condenser and heat-pump dryers collect the water in a tank instead — which only works if you empty the tank.

The bit people skip

Clothes left damp in the machine overnight, or folded away not-quite-dry, are the same problem in a smaller container. EPA's window for damp materials is 24 to 48 hours before growth becomes likely (A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home). A forgotten load sits inside that window comfortably.

If a wash smells musty when it comes out, that is the machine telling you about itself, not the detergent. Leave the door and the drawer open between washes.

Read the sources

• EPA — Ten Things You Should Know about Mold — reproduced here; original at https://www.epa.gov/mold/ten-things-you-should-know-about-mold
• EPA — A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home — reproduced here; original at https://www.epa.gov/mold/brief-guide-mold-moisture-and-your-home