If there's one chore you can't escape it's the washing and in most households there's a lot of it. But with energy costs on the rise families have been looking for alternatives to dry their clothes so they can avoid racking up a big bill from the central heating or tumble dryer.
The heated airer is one solution and it was the Dry-Soon Deluxe 3-Tier Heated Airer from Lakeland that I decided to test out.
Sales of these airers have shot up over recent months and this one in particular, with more than 100 five-star reviews, has been in big demand.
It can actually hold up to 15kg of wet washing over 21 metres of drying space and earlier this year we reported how families had been raving about the product, saying they 'wouldn't be without it'.
I'm not sure what my washing weighed, but after at least four days of no washing with four people in the house, there was a lot - isn't there always!
The description says it 'costs just pennies to run', but I wanted to know exactly how many pennies. So, having bought myself a nifty electricity monitor to check the usage of individual items, I checked it for myself.
It was on for five hours overall, which amounted to 45p on my current electricity rate, or 9p an hour. When the rate increases on October 1, it will be just under 54p for the same time, or just under 11p per hour.
It wasn't all dry in that time, but the good thing about these is that when it's on, your room heats up too - so the spare bedroom I use when working from home was toasty warm. And the heat that lingered once it was turned off helped to finish most of them off.
You can get a cover for the airer too, which speeds up the drying time - although I'm told sticking a bed sheet over the top has the same effect. I didn't use it as I wanted to make use of the heat coming from it while I was there, rather than most of it staying trapped inside.
I could have done with the cover to stop our dog getting near though - not sure if all Labradors have the same sock fetish but he's obsessed - and I'll certainly be giving it a go when I'm not in the room. Reassuringly there's a mesh top and sides to the cover to prevent it from getting too hot.
I'd say the real beauty of this particular model is definitely its size, especially when you've got a family-load or loads to get dry, with school uniforms, sports kits and whatever else they've decided to stick in the wash after a couple of hours' wear.
But it's light enough to move around to wherever you want to use it when not in use it folds away neatly, with the cover turning into a storage bag.
Dry-Soon Deluxe 3-Tier Heated Airer costs £179.99 and delivery is free. You can buy the airer and cover as a bundle for £209.98.
Read more of today's top stories here
READ NEXT:
