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Surely, you jest. I am not one who said (or believes) that guests should do things “according to their rules” and that you should accommodate guests’ wishes to “litter your house and warp your furniture” with wet or dirty clothes.
I don’t know why you are pointing your finger at me as the source.
I don’t even recall you mentioning anything about guests’ wet items warping your furniture, though that’s neither here nor there. The point is, I don’t have a bone to pick with you, though you make it seem so. I merely offered you a solution to one problem and a “reality” comment about the other.
Your final comment which you addressed to include me: “…you all tell me that I should let guests dry clothes in a way that is destructive to my property” is really off the wall. If you prefer not to re-read my response to you and retract your comments to me, then I’ll just assume you need a nap.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to ask this if your guests, it’s obviously important to you and they need to respect that. Do you have it in your house rules?
Assuming you allow guests use of laundry facilities, I would add to your house rules something like:
‘Guests are not permitted to air dry clothes indoors or outdoors anywhere on the property. Full laundry facilities, including a dryer, are available for your use’
I used to dry my hand washing on a rack in my bedroom, until mold grew on the floor under the rack. Yes, drying clothes over wood furniture or floors is destructive.
The whole continent here is drying clothes on the rack inside, and I never ever heard of such an occurence. Also, I guess you don’t have such guests all the time. You would have to dry wet, dripping clothes on the drying rack day after day to have this happen, if at all. If the clothes are normally spinned or drained it won’t happen. You were HAND washing it and not draining it properly. It happened to me sometimes too, but I never had moldy floor afterwards. Its funny how you accuse your guests of having misconceptions and prejudice about using the dryer and in the same time, you have similarly weird ideas about drying clothes on the rack. In any case, your house, your rules, your nerves.
I don’t see where I said that guests have misconceptions about using the dryer. As all my views on air drying come from experience, I don’t see how my views are misconceptions.
I am also finding the double standards (not quite the correct word) to be jarring. @EllenN has about three things that she cares about. Otherwise, from what we can see she lets guests set the tone of her house during their stays, even cooking bacon with its splatter in her vegetarian kitchen.
Water should not be dripping on real hardwood floors. I am thinking through the 25 apartments/houses that my European cousins live in, and I can not think of one of them that has a drying rack over wood. For the most part, they have a drying contraption that is on a pulley system over the bathtub which they lower to access. A few do have a small drying rack in the bath to supplement, but the floors are tile.
I have had a few families wash their underwear in their bathroom and hang the wet clothes on my wood hangars. They will need to be replaced soon. I have chosen not to add a drying rack, simply because I really don’t want people feeling encouraged to do their laundry in their rooms. There are two laundromats within walking distance. To be honest, my average stay is between 2 and 4 nights. Laundry just isn’t an amenity that I can offer given how dangerous my basement stairs are when you are carrying a laundry basket.
[ASIDE: A family arrived from San Francisco last week. That is where they live. Each night, they did laundry by hand. They hadn’t even been away from home for 24 hours and they were doing laundry! Can anyone explain this to me?]
I use three wooden drying racks, they are about 10 years old, none are cracking, warping or otherwise falling apart. I hang damp clothes out of the washer on the racks, in the winter the racks are set up in a room with laminate floor, which is not good when exposed to water, but as my clothes are not dripping large pools of water, it’s not an issue.
Re the daily washing that’s a royal pain. My cousin came from England to visit. Not two hours after they arrived, his wife was doing laundry!
At least you guys don’t have guests dragging salty wetsuits and other scuba diving gear through the house, washing them in your bathtub, then dragging them back out and hanging them on the line. Happened so much it had to be a new rule.
If properly spinned, clothes should definitely not be dripping (Louise mentioned the same thing). I have a drying rack over a wooden floor and it is in a perfect condition as clothes are properly spinned and if handwashed, properly drained before putting it on the rack. A lot of people also have drying racks on their balconies or porches, if the space allows it. I think that’s definitely preferable to guests drying clothes on the wooden hangers (I gave up on these in my apartments long time ago, btw) and furniture.
As for the constant washing, I agree that’s superirritating. I don’t have a washing machine in my apartments and I started charging for washing in my machine (at least on paper) as some guests were totally exaggerating, giving me supersmall loads of clothes to wash every single day. Still I see that many decide to handwash their clothes rather than pay 5 euro (!) per load, dried and ironed. Luckily I have a line right outside of the apartment, otherwise I’m convinced that they would dry it on the furniture…
Everyone who’s visited Spain or Italy must have seen the CORRECT way to dry clothes … you have a retractable line outside the window of the Lavanderia in your apartment which goes over the internal courtyard on a pulley system and is fixed to the wall of your opposite neighbour. This is a great way of chatting loudly with your neighbour and explains why Spanish towns are so noisy. Alternatively just string a line up on the front balcony. Most blocks of flats are so ugly that they look better decorated like this.
Ha! Growing up in the Bronx my mother had a line strung across the interior courtyard to her neighbors window and vice versa. They used to talk very loudly in Italian lol
Explanation for your guests from SF:
They are cheap. They dont’ want to pay for a laundromat and they didn’t want to pay any fees for checked baggage. They only brought what clothes could fit in carry one. So, they wash clothes each night to have enough to wear.
Also, I guess you don’t have such guests all the time. You would have to dry wet, dripping clothes on the drying rack day after day to have this happen, if at all. If the clothes are normally spinned or drained it won’t happen. You were HAND washing it and not draining it properly. It happened to me sometimes too, but I never had moldy floor afterwards. Its funny how you accuse your guests of having misconceptions and prejudice about using the dryer and in the same time, you have similarly weird ideas about drying clothes on the rack.
