If you walk through the streets in severe frost, you can see that people hang clothes to dry directly on the street. And it doesn’t matter whether it is a village courtyard or a city block - people do it everywhere, turning clothes into a solid block of ice. In fact, such an action is rather controversial, I would like to understand more deeply whether this makes sense or is it just some kind of human prejudices, signs and customs?
Does the laundry dry
It is important to understand that at low temperatures, water molecules freeze and remain in the tissue. Who knows physics, he will say that water will still go into the environment. Yes, but it doesn’t help the laundry dry out, the person will not notice any difference. It is worth bringing the tissue into heat, as it begins to thaw and release the water that has been "mothballed" inside.
This method is suitable if frost is outside only in the mornings - then the hostess will wash the laundry, hang it in the morning, everything will freeze, and in the daytime it will thaw and dry. If the action of the sun still joins this, there will be the highest quality result.
What is useful in this
The benefits of such an action are very mixed. Even after reading the information on the Internet, you can get confused among the opinions of experienced physicists and ordinary housewives who have been doing this for several generations and do not complain. However, you can find very interesting thoughts that make you think about the true meaning of such drying clothes.
For example, some are of the opinion that the bed mites that inhabit our bed, our linen, remain in small quantities even after a thorough wash. These are quite tenacious creatures that can survive the wash and even put offspring in the fibers of the fabric. With this, the old method will help to fight - hanging clothes in the cold. Under prolonged exposure to negative temperatures, all organisms that were in the tissue will die, giving the linen extraordinary freshness. It is necessary that the laundry is wet and sags on the street long enough - then every piece of fabric will be exposed to action.
How wet fabric behaves in the cold
Anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with the school physics course understands that wet tissue will freeze at low temperatures. Rather, not the tissue itself, but the water molecules that are contained within it. This makes linen and clothes very hard, like stone, because water has passed into a solid state of aggregation - ice. In this condition, the clothes are not so hard to fold neatly, it is almost impossible to remove them from the dryer. Therefore, housewives often wash and hang things on the street in the morning, when it is still cold, to remove everything during the day, when it will be warmer and the frost will subside.
If you try to straighten the thing removed from the dryer, you can hear a crunch - this breaks the ice, which is now between the fibers of the fabric. Many people have a fear at such moments to break a thing. Such a fear is justified, because the crunch when bending is really strong, and you need to make a lot of effort. However, it is extremely difficult to break the laundry, for this you need to hang out as wet cloth as possible, with which water literally drains. In addition, there should be severe frost on the street, as in winter in Siberia.
If you comply with these conditions and try as much as possible, then, probably, you can break the thing into several parts, split it. At a minimum, the linen will leave marks on itself for sure: various mechanical damages, small torn areas, and holes in the fabric in places.
Is it worth it and why
For many people, hanging wet clothes in the cold is not so much a habit as a family tradition - grandmothers and great-grandmothers did this. However, they did not complain about such a method of drying, things did not break and it does not bring any harm to health. In addition, it is very good to sleep on linen that has been thoroughly frozen, clean and dried - frosty freshness is literally transferred to the fabric, providing a pleasant and comfortable sleep. The same thing happens with clothes, it becomes more pleasant to wear, a feeling of crystal purity and freshness of the thing appears.
There is much debate about whether this method is worth drying things. Someone may talk about the dangers of such a procedure, however, this one is not proven at all. Probably, there is some truth to this side of the barricades - you really need to be careful with delicate linen from sensitive fabrics, but, for example, an ordinary thick cotton sheet will quite easily tolerate freezing. Fans of freeze-drying will always be there, they can be understood, because linen after frost becomes like new, having gone through all degrees of cleaning.
Everyone decides for himself how to dry lingerie and clothes. The most important thing is to do it as you want and comfortably yourself, without paying attention to the opinions of other people and their discussions.
