Getting clothes dry in winter is an ongoing battle, particularly in wet weather, so when we discovered this bedsheet clothes airer hack we were keen to give it a go.
On TikTok, people have been sharing a simple trick for drying clothes fast that basically involves draping a fitted sheet over your clothes airer and tucking it down the back of a radiator.
This certainly sounds like it would speed up drying times – here’s what happened when we tried it.
(Image credit: Future PLC)
Bedsheet clothes airer hack
Laura Williams (@cleaning_at83) shared a TikTok where she used the hack to dry some baby grows. She fills a regular drying rack and covers it with a fitted sheet to get things toasty.
Laura says she left it like this for a few hours and the clothes were left bone dry. In the comments, users shared many other time-saving tricks for drying clothes and saving energy at home by avoiding the tumble dryer.
‘Or hang it inside a room with an open window and use a fan blowing the moisture out of the window,’ suggests one. Another recommended buying a dehumidifier which will help clothes dry fast and help get rid of damp and mould.
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Ideal Home Ecommerce Writer Molly Cleary tried the hack herself, and it’s since become a standard part of her at-home care and cleaning routine. She recommends using one of the best heated clothes airers on the market to make things more efficient, as it saves turning the heating on, and the airer tends to heat up the whole room.
Molly Cleary
Molly is the Ecommerce Writer for Ideal Home and is always on the lookout for the next must-buy product for your home. Covering all things appliance related, with an emphasis on floorcare and air fryers, she regularly joins Millie at Future’s Test Facility in Reading to thoroughly put products through their paces.
‘I love my heated airer from Robert Dyas (opens in new tab) and have it on most days,’ says Molly. ‘However, when it’s particularly cold, it takes longer than I would like to fully dry my clothes.
‘In the past, I’ve needed to shuffle my clothes around so that they get more direct heat from the bars underneath, which is time-consuming. I found the bedsheet clothes airer hack really effective – a double sheet fits nicely over the one I have.
(Image credit: Future / Rebecca Knight)
‘I then make sure to close the door to the room that the airer is in,’ says Molly. ‘When I come back a few hours later I always find the room is toasty warm (which is great in the current crisis too!) and that my clothes have dried faster.’
Usually, Molly found clothes would take a full day to dry on her heated airer, but the bedsheet hack halved the drying time, taking around six hours.
Heated clothes airers have been flying off shelves recently, as people seek cost-efficient ways to do their laundry. Lakeland’s most efficient heated airer has a wattage of 300W. If you had it on for one hour (0.3kW x 34p) it would cost around 10p, so four hours would cost 40p. When Molly tried an energy monitoring plug, she found her heated airer cost 6p an hour to run.
Will you be trying this hack?