Most of the time stiffness is due to laundry detergent build up or hard water conditions. It can also occur with lack of breeze. Laundry flapping in the wind is less stiff due to the fabric constantly moving. I live in a hard water area and still hang my clothes outside. I do not mind the stiffness, even in my towels and have not found the stiff towels to be less absorbent. In fact, I read somewhere, can't remember where, that still fabric is actually good for your skin as it exfoliates there in by keeping your skin healthier. Besides most stiffness goes away with wear and/or use. As for the smell of the clothing line dried, it has been my experience that unless you use a heavily perfumed detergent, the fresh air pretty much removes any scent. Now if you live in an area where the air stinks, then you may end up with that smell on your clothes. I had a prob with that a while back due to a near by resturant and all their greasy smelling cooking. My clothes were smelling like old hamburgers. Thank God they moved their business else where and I have had no further problems. Detergent build up and using fabric softner can make your clothes smell nasty too depending on what you are using, aka ingredients in them. Type of fabric can have a factor as to scent too. On a final note regarding odor in lined dried fabrics, many people are so use to the smell they get from detergents or their driers, which actually alters the smell of clothes even washed in perfume free detergents, that they have absolutely no idea what actual fresh clothing smells like. Clothes washed in a scent free detergent and then put in the drier smell different from those that are lined dried. Once you learn what an actual outdoor fresh smell is, the rest is a piece of cake.

We dry all our clothes indoors all year in the basement and have for many years. There are no signs of mold/mildew anywhere, but I can see how this might happen if you aren't conscious about climate control (humidity/temperature/air-flow), hung laundry more frequently than the twice a week like we do, or hung really large amounts of clothing (we max out at 2 loads). Our home is 9-years old, so the basement is quite sound and no water infiltration or dampness anywhere. The drying room isn't a finished room - concrete on one side and open studs on 2 sides - so it's not enclosed with sheet rock. During 6-months out of the year there is a dehumidifier running in the basement - a necessity in Kansas. The relative humidity is never higher than 45-50% (with an air temperature of 65-70°F) in the summer, and the humidity is always much lower in the winter. I track the relative humidity in the basement at all times because we have a food storage room where the humidity needs to be regulated for optimal storage. Because we also move the air over the wet clothes with a ceiling fan, and a floor fan on the items hanging from a hanger on the rod, the moisture actually dissipates very quickly. Even sheets and pants dry quickly. Pants/slacks/jeans dry quickly because I hang them up-side down from the pants hem. I pin one leg to one line (maintaining the crease in the pants), and the other leg to the line in front of that so the crotch (which typically dries slowly if you hang pants from the waist) is open to the air-flow from the ceiling fan. The weight from the body of the pants actually aids in pulling out any wrinkles and gives pants a nice crease. Everything is dry in a few hours. -Grainlady

I work with fibers and have about a dozen wool blankets, some I bought new and some are vintage. I think my favorites are some of the merino faribault blankets. I never dry clean mine as I think that it is hard on the wool. You do have to dry clean structured things like suits or pants but I wash blankets and sweaters. The lanolin is gone from commercially processed wool. Maybe they put some other finish on it. Sheep are filthy animals and they use some pretty strong chemicals to dissolve all the muck. If you can find wool processed by an individual you might get some lanolin left in. There are ways to relanolize wool but the main benefit of that is water proofing as Cavimum says rather than making it warmer. Some people do it to diaper covers. The sheep fiber has a structure with scales called the cuticle. This is kind of an interesting picture of different fibers. You can treat wool in different ways to change the way the cuticle lays. If you wash wool in hot water and agitate it like crazy, the cuticle opens and and the fibers get entangled and shrink up. This is great insulation but of course you don't want that for your blanket. When you wash it in cool water though with the bare minimum of agitation and just a small amount of something to help any dirt be carried away, you get just sort of a restoration to the cuticle which helps with the loft. I use my top load machine but it has a handwash cycle and I know what it will do. I use a very bland shampoo or if really dirty, I might use a detergent without enzymes. You have to read the package to make sure there are none each time you buy. You could handwash pressing the water through the blanket, in a sink too if you are worried about your machine being too much. I rinse several times. If you have a top load machine, you could spin it out if you lay it carefully in and avoid it pulling anywhere when it spins. If you can't do that maybe lay it on towels. I usually add just a tiny bit of hair condition to the second to last rinse which helps in blocking if you want to do that. I usually dry blankets after they spin out on one of the beds.

RN, the sequins and beads were sewn on to lace. They lost none of their luster in the wash. I was afraid if i soaked just the bottoms of the gowns the soaked fabrics would behave differently from the unsoaked fabrics and trims, so I pushed the entire gown into the machine for the soak and wash. Every bit of the black dirt on the hems and trains is gone. One girl was married in a garden so you can imagine what that was like, the other was married in a children's museum and the wine drips on the front are absolutely gone! I only air dried the gowns in the dryer for several minutes to get the layers fluffed, then hung them on doors to dry. That took days! I fluffed and readjusted repeatedly, but in the end both gowns are perfect and we saved hundreds of dollars. Re The cleaning and preserving: My own gown was preserved in 1968. When we opened it before my eldest dtrs wedding in 1996, all the silver baguettes my mother had sewn on my lace had turned black, and the little seed pearls had lost their luster. It was awful, completely studded with black spots, so useless for any purpose at all. For some reason, I saved it anyway! We Good luck with the project!