Drying & Organizing My Wool

I’ve been on my merino wool conversion journey since December 2022 and during that time I’ve tried several methods of drying my clothes. Initially it was attempting to dry things flat. I bought two items from Amazon – a mesh over the door dryer rack and a sweater rack. The sweater rack wouldn’t fit in our tub and took up too much room, so back it went. Here is the over the door rack with several shirts and one heavy tunic hoodie on the back of our bathroom door. Note, it folds flat when not in use.

That worked for a while but I soon moved to hanging larger item and only using it for underwear and socks. My next try was another over the door rack that also folded flat when not in use. It went on the opposite of the bathroom door and I used both racks at the same time.

This worked quite well for several months, but when the mesh rack was in use, it was a bit of a pain to get in and out of the bathroom. Since I had moved to all wool underwear, I got a small over the door hanger for the guest room door and started hanging my bras and undies there. It also worked for my maxi-dresses.

The combination of the two over the door racks was my main way to dry my wool clothes until July 2024. We were selling all our unused motorcycle gear including a lot of jackets, riding pants, and rain suits at a local bike event. We needed a way to display them and I found an inexpensive folding garment rack on Amazon. When the sale was over, I realized this was perfect to use for my wool clothes, allowing better air flow between each item. It also folds up and stores in a corner, out of the way.

I should note that there are a few items I dry flat on the guest bed, moving to a hanger when mostly dry. I still use the small hanger on the guest room door for undies when there isn’t room on the garment rack and while I still have the bathroom door hanger, it rarely gets used now (but it handy to have if we have company in the guest room).

While working my way through to my final solution, I also found hangers that I really like and a way to organize my closet that works for me. First, the hangers. I fell in love with these for two reasons. The first was the easy way to slide items on without stretching out the neck. The second was they took up less room than my old ones (thinner) with the added bonus of a swivel hook.

Next up was figuring out the best way to organize my items in my closet. Some sort by color, some by size, some by season. I sort by item name and sleeve length. LOL! I found these neat tags on Amazon and used my Fine Point Sharpie (NOT the little pen that came with them) to write the item names. Not all brands put the name in the item, Woolx does now but didn’t when I started. This also helps when I want to resell something and aren’t sure what the item name is.

This was before...

This was after...

Note that heavier/thicker items like hoodies, sweatshirts, and sweatpants are stored in cubes in my closet. Shorts, tank tops (I use as a winter base layer), leggings, underwear, socks, and other small wool items are stored in drawers.

I hope if you are new to the wool world, this will help you figure out what will work for you with a bit less of the trial and error I’ve been through.