Placing clothes on the radiator: tips to avoid bad smells developing

When it's cold and raining outside and you can't hang your clothes outdoors or have a clothes dryer, you may resort to using the radiators to dry your laundry.

Placing smaller items of laundry on the radiators helps us to leave space on the clothes horse for bulkier clothes (like sheets). However, sometimes, an unpleasant smell comes from the clothes which are placed on the radiator and also gets into the garments. So, how can we resolve this problem?

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The main reason for the smell is humidity: both the humidity trapped in the fabrics and the humidity generated in the room where we hang up the washing. So, a first useful tip is to place on the radiators only those garments that have been are already near-dry after the spinning in the washing machine. This is perhaps the case with less delicate clothing such as sportswear, or pillowcases or bathroom towels (or other items made of fabrics which soak up less water).

At other times, the clothes may have been washed properly but weren't taken out of the washer quick enough (and which have been left in the machine for hours). So, if you can't hang everything up immediately after the wash, at least open the washing machine's door or, better yet, remove the clothes from the drum and scatter them out as best you can on some flat surface (to be hung up later when you have the time).

Additionally, both on the radiator and on the clothes horse, sometimes the clothes give off bad smells even after washing because the fibers are saturated with detergent: if too much is used, it is not rinsed off properly and causes unpleasant smells.

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When it's time to put clothes on the radiator, don't pile them on top of each other. The more difficult you make the evaporation of water, the more this will be a vehicle for bad smells.

Again, make sure to air the room, or keep a dehumidifier on at least in the first hour in which the clothes are drying on the radiator.

To take advantage of the heat of the radiator, you can place the garments partially on it and then stretch them out to secure them to the clothes horse that you have positioned nearby. In this way, there will still be air circulation and the heat produced will also dry the washing quickly, reducing the level of humidity that is generated in the room.

These are small steps that can really make a difference!