Is it the freedom
It's the venting. In the USA, dryers have massive exhaust vents to the outside of the room/building that take the hot wet away and leave hot dry behind. In many other countries, dryers do not generally have external exhaust vents, and simply fill the room they are in with the hot wet, which may or may not be enough to actually remove the hot wet from the clothing depending on how well ventilated the room itself is.
for this reason 1) you generally can't leave the dryer open in winter without causing a draft and 2) sometimes when you're walking around outside in the US the world will suddenly smell of clean laundry because you're near someone's house and their dryer is running
And 3) Eventually your drier stops drying things so well and you have to hire somebody to bring a ladder up to the vent (either high up an exterior wall or on the literal roof) and clear out the accumulated lint and cruft blocking it
You ought to do this regularly even if the dryer efficiency remains the same, because dryer lint is fantastically competent at burning your damn house down if you let it catch fire.
I'm in Australia (no exhaust vents), and I've found that if your dryer starts making hot wet laundry, you first clean out the lint trap that you already know about and clean every time, and then you go looking for the second secret lint trap that nobody told you about and clean out the year's worth of lint in there that you were blissfully unaware of. The dryer will now mostly dry your laundry again, and give you either hot dry laundry or hot just-very-slightly-damp laundry.
This reminds me of the story about the couple who kept cleaning two different dryer vents and were confused why their so never cleaned the lint
That post was what first prompted me to go looking for a possible second lint trap
I'm genuinely appalled that dryers outside the US are not vented to the outside world. That much moisture just...builds up in your house/apartment every time you use your dryer?? Does that not lend itself to mold growth over time?
Mine recondenses the water into a little tub that I empty into a sink after use. I could also get a plumber in to vent the water directly into the greywater but I prefer being able to have the dryer in a part of the room with no direct water system access.
That makes much more sense tbh. I was envisioning a steam room and the associated drywall moisture damage every time you do laundry, like "at that point I would just opt for a clothesline" lol.
(Which we do still use in the US, despite the popular conception that we all have dryers. Not as common as it once was, but I've lived several places where we used a clothesline bc we had a washer but no dryer.)
In Australia most people use clotheslines all the time, and even those of us who have dryers tend to only use them when the weather is too wet to make line drying practical. Electricity is expensive and sunlight is free. Can't speak for people living in city apartments and suchlike though.
I grew up in Aotearoa and formerly lived in the US and now live in the UK and yes every dryer I have ever seen is absolutely vented to the outdoors???
What are the Australians doing?
Line drying, mostly.
I’m in the uk and every dryer ive seen has either had a removable condenser or has been piped into the wall/grey water like derin said. Most people over here use a clothes line or horse.
I'm sorry, a clothes line or a WHAT?
A clothes horse
They come in many shapes, most of them designed to fold away easily when you're not drying or airing anything.
In the USA, we call those (clothes/laundry) drying racks. There's a bit of variation depending on the brand advertising, but I've never seen them called a clothes horse.
I've only ever heard/seen "clotheshorse" used to refer to a particularly fashionable/fashion-oriented person, typically one with an extensive wardrobe.
They call people that because they are likening the people to the drying racks, acting like their purpose is to hang and display an absurd number of clothes on their bodies.
Why is that first drying rack labeled "costs from 3p an hour to run"?
My guess is that it might be from an ad comparing a clotheshorse setup to a dryer or something, and the 3p refers to the running cost of a space heater. You need a room to be a reasonable temperature to air dry clothes, so if you live somewhere particularly cold then you need to heat the room.
I think it’s actually a heated airer. You plug it in and the rods heat up to dry the clothes faster. I had one in my old flat and it was life changing.
I'm in the UK and my dryer is a condenser (as described by derin). There's also a cheaper kind of dryer where you have to either plumb it in OR, supposedly, hang the hose out of a window.
I empty mine's tank and lint trap after every use. However, it does occasionally stop working and then I have to go around the back and clean it's grease trap. BUT I think that's a fairly niche issue.
ETA oh I am also aware of the second secret lint trap. Real bitch to clean out.
