Towel method helps speed up drying wet laundry

If you want the wet washing in your dryer to be done faster this trick being shared online could be the solution to speeding up the process.

Have you heard of the dry towel “trick” when it comes to drying wet clothes?

According to a bunch of Aussie mums, if you add a dry towel to the mix it significantly reduces the time it takes to dry wet clothes.

One woman, who took to a popular Kmart group on Facebook, was inspired to try the “trick” after seeing it online and has since been inundated with more than 1,000 comments and more than 3,500 ‘likes’ from fellow women agreeing that it does actually work.

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If you find it takes ages to dry wet clothes, well have you tried the towel method everyone is raving about?

“To the lady who said she puts a dry towel in the dryer with your wet stuff. Thank you. I have saved 20 min of drying time for my towels and 15 min for my clothes,” her post read.

“If I set my dryer for an hour of drying, it does an hour of airing. By putting a dry towel in the dryer with your clothes it absorbs some of the water so it makes the clothes dry quicker.”

Others agreed it “works like a charm” and it’s “the best thing”.

Some even suggested to add a wet face washer in with dry clothes on a warm cycle.

“It will create steam to get rid of wrinkles!” one woman wrote, while another added. “And if you don’t want to iron something, put a damp face washer in your dryer with your shirt for 10 minutes and presto.”

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By adding a dry towel to the mix it can help significantly reduce the moisture in the wet items and in turn speed up the drying time. Picture: iStock

While there were plenty of people already aware of the “handy trick”, others had no idea about it.

“Never heard of this hack need to try it,” one woman wrote.

“Omgggg we need to do this,” another said, while tagging their friend.

“Such a good old trick! Never fails when ya in a rush and need stuff dried ASAP! Sometimes I put 2 or 3 in depending what I’m wanting to dry faster and how much,” a third person added.

However, in order for it to be super effective, Dylan, from Household Hacker who has 4.94 million subscribers on YouTube, advises that there is a time limit on how long the dry towel should be in the dryer in order for the hack to be fully effective.

In a YouTube video, Dylan from Household Hacker put it to the test, and above is the result of no towel, showing 21 per cent moisture. Picture: YouTube/HouseholdHacker

This was the result of having adding a dry towel to the mix, showing nine per cent moisture. Picture: YouTube/HouseholdHacker

In a YouTube clip, he puts the hack to the test and while he agrees with the method, he says it only works best if you remove the towel after 15 to 20 minutes.

Why? because that towel is still contributing to the moisture in the dryer and even extending the drying time, according to Dylan.

“If that towel stays in there for the entire time, you're actually going to take surface area away from the inside dryer bin,” he explains.

“Think of it like this; if you take a glass of water and put half of it into a bowl and the other half onto a cooking sheet, which do you think it going to dry first? Obviously the cooking sheet because there’s more surface area, so by removing the wet towel by this point were actually reducing drying time by increasing surface area.

However, he suggested for it to be even more effective, take the towel out after 15 minutes. Picture: iStock

“It’s really that simple — the air is going to circulate better and everything is going to flow, but by keeping that towel in there is going to bunch it all up and make the drying process even longer.”

Colin Jones, category expert, from Appliances Online, dished out another handy tip when it comes to drying clothes faster.

He said the key to efficient drying is to place the correct amount of items together based on the size of the dryer and to dry the same type of items together.

This is what he was referring to with his water Vs cooking sheet example. Picture: YouTube/HouseholdHacker

“A common mistake people make is to overload their dryers with too many wet items, making the drying process longer.,” he told news.com.au

“For example, if you have a 5kg dryer, you should be placing half that kg load of wet items into your dryer, anything more and you would be overloading it.

“Regardless of the dryers capacity, people should consider that wet clothes weigh more and shouldn’t be filling their dryers up; consider half a load of wet clothes as the correct weight.”