Reduce #1: using a drying rack

I made my first easy choice today! I did two loads of laundry and chose to put one load onto a drying rack instead of using a dryer. I am going to try to stick with this plan whenever I do laundry. This way, I can use the dyer for things like jeans, sheets, and towels that I really like tumble-dried while still saving some energy.

The environmental benefit of not using the dryer for half of my laundry is reducing electricity and natural gas use. The easy part is that I save money ($1.50 per cycle in the dryer in my apartment building), and it only takes a few minutes to hang up a full load on the enormous drying rack I found in a give-away pile. The drying rack was from Ikea and would have cost $19.99 new (see it here)-- still a good deal!

How much can I save in one year?
With the commercial dryer in my apartment building, one cycle of drying takes 60 minutes and uses 24 cubic feet of natural gas (24,000 BTU/hour* 1hour/1000 BTU per cubic foot of natural gas), .720 kWh of electricity (6Amps*120Volts), and 6 quarters.
I do about 52 loads of laundry in a year and am committing myself to dry 26 of those on a drying rack. These 26 loads of laundry dried on a rack will save:
18.72 kWh of electricity
624 cubic feet of natural gas
$39.00
*admittedly, I am not considering the cost of the drying rack in terms of the environmental impact of manufacturing or the monetary cost (because I found one for free!).