Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Using a spinner dryer

Good equipment makes all the difference.

If you dye and hand paint fine fabrics - particularly silks and rayons- you know that washing, drying, and ironing the fabrics during the creative process takes an unbelievable amount of time. Due to my arthritic hand problems I have found myself reluctant to start some projects becasue I couldn't face handling the fabrics through all the washing, rinsing, wringing, towel drying, ironing steps.

I was excited to find a large capacity affordable spin dryer that could take some of the drudgery out of my work for about $150 (delivered).

I received my spin dryer from Laundry Alternative yesterday and I am wildly happy with it. First - time from order to delivery: 7 days UPS ground. Next, I took 3 clean kitchen towels from the drawer, soaked them in 2 cups of water, and put them in the spin dryer dripping wet. The water that came out of the spinner was almost exactly the amount that was used to soak the towels. The really amazing things were the amount of soap bubbles in the water and how the terry towels were nearly dry when they came out of the spinner. Next, I took a load of fresh laundry out of my washer and loaded it into the spinner. Over 2 cups of soapy water was extracted by the spinner. Finally, I took a basket of hand wash items that I have been avoiding for a while. The fabrics included silk (habotai, chiffon, noil, crepe), rayon, beaded cotton, a heavy silk/cotton sweater, and a particularly awful-to-wash cotton gauze batik. I sink washed and rinsed as usual then loaded the like color items in the spinner without any wringing. The results were exceptional. The delicate silks came out ready for a quick press with the iron; the beaded cotton, rayons and the long batik dress dried completely after hanging for 1 hour; and the heavy sweater dried flat in 5 hours.

This spin dryer cut my hand washing time by about 75% and the results on the fine fabrics were equivalent to my previous labor intensive handling.

I have now eliminated wringing with my hands and the awful task of drying delicate fabrics by rolling them into big terry towels. Wringing and toweling is tedious work for anyone, but it’s the absolute worst thing you can do with arthritic hands.

Re cottons: this gadget isn't just for the finer things in life. The full laundry load referred to above was a combo of cottons and some really fine cotton(98%) lycra (2%) designer pants that are my faves. When I put them through the spinner after the washing machine had finished its job I got designer pants that dried on a hanger in an hour (usually takes 5-8 hours) and the no shrink cotton things that I put in my electric dryer (on low temp) were fully dry in 15 minutes.
 
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