I learned a frugal trick this cold and wet winter, double spinning my clothes before drying [View all]

I've cut the time needed to dry my clothes in the dryer by nearly twenty percent by running the final spin cycle on my washer a second time.

It's been far too wet and cold to hang laundry out much this winter so I've been using the dryer more than usual. Had some problems with the timer mechanism on my washing machine and ended up final spinning the clothes a second time by accident a couple of times and realized it wasn't taking as long in the dryer as otherwise. I'm not sure of the overall energy savings but my washer runs on 115V and doesn't draw a lot of power while my dryer runs on 230V and does draw quite a bit for the heating elements.

One of these days I'm going to weigh a washer load after the first spin cycle and then put them back in and spin again then reweigh just to see how much extra water it gets out.. My old top load washer really doesn't pick up full speed spin until about half way through the spin cycle on the first time, the second time it comes up to speed much faster without all the water in the basket dragging it down. Even near the end of the second final spin some water still comes dribbling out of the drain hose into my utility room slop sink where it dumps.