I think I’ve found the best Mummy gadget ever and I just had to share it with you! I’ve long had the problem, like many Mum’s, of where and how to dry my washing. We live in a converted Victorian Terrace house you see and in the upstairs flat at that! We obviously have no garden and to top matters off we have silly (but attractive) radiators that don’t allow for much hanging of washing, we don’t have room for a tumble dryer and when choosing the flat we decided as a childless couple that storage and spaces to hang drying clothes were not of premium importance. Oh how silly we were! Fast forward 4 years and here we are with two babies and mountains of washing. I have been known in the winter to even frequent the local laundrette and let me tell you it is NOT, as East Enders would have you believe, a hive of friendly chitter chatter and fun! It is dirty, inconvenient, run by a man who shouts if you don’t have the correct change and dangerous for children to be around, not to mention boring!

Mostly in the colder months when I can’t have my windows open drying the Chinese laundry that is my house I pack up the car to the brim and take it all to Norfolk for my Mum to do fortnightly. It’s got so bad of late that when we have guests like my Mum or my sister-in-law I’ve been asking them to bring their own bedding and towels knowing that they’ll take it away with them when they go and I won’t have the added hill to my already substantial mountain! When both children got sick last week and we were fortunately staying at my Mum’s it posed the question what would we have done if we’d been at home. As you will know from my previous posts Jimmy and Florence had a rather nasty tummy bug which meant we were even in hospital over night with Jimmy. With both of them having thrown up all morning, by the time I went to hospital with Jimmy my Mum’s bath was already full with loads for the washing machine. Had it happened at home, with nowhere to get it all dry, how on earth would it have got done? My Mum decided I needed a solution and having remembered a friend’s recommendation of the Lakeland Dry-Soon 3-Tier Heated Airer, we decided to investigate further.

My friend mentioned it to me a few weeks ago saying she’d heard loads of good stuff about it and then when we went to have a look at it, another customer even came up to me in the shop and said all the same positive things again! Well that clinched it for my Mum and she bought it there and then for us as an early Christmas present! My Mum’s always been a lovely present giver and very often in the past she’s been known to treat me to early gifts for Christmas or my birthday but always in the past they have been of the frivolous variety, clothes, make-up, shoes… Quite a change then to be gleeful at a heated clothes dryer… But gleeful I am and even more so now that I know first hand how amazingly it works! I was told to place a sheet over everything and it would speed up the drying process further. It was mentioned that while jeans and towels may take a little longer, baby clothes etc would be dry in under 2 hours and guess what? They ARE! I used to have washing hanging up all over the house, hanging on the vacuum cleaner, the stair gates, banisters and our old, pretty rubbish,clothes dryer. It then stayed wet for days! This new heated airer not only has many more rungs to hang things on but it actually dries things in hours… To cap off its brilliance, instead of waiting around to do my sheets until I know I can get them dry relatively quickly I am actively washing one with each load to drape over it and enclose the heat for the rest of the washing! I love it!

You can have up to 6 wings out (like the first picture showing one) all with many rungs. When all the washing is hung on as in picture 2 you can then drape a sheet over the whole thing as the third picture shows.

For heavier items like towels they can hang over individual wings using all the rungs on that one.

The benefits do not stop at just that! So the way it works is that it is completely flat when not in use (It’s perfect to store under a bed or sofa – not that I’ve put it away much to be honest). It has three tiers with a fold out shelf each side at each tier.You can have it so that only one side is up and stand it flat against the wall or have it fully out and in the middle of a room. This is really no bother when you consider that things will be dry quickly and having it in the middle of a room for a couple of hours is far preferable to days of things hanging around everywhere else! It’s also really light and easy to move from room to room. Another plus is that it is hot enough to dry the clothes but not  at all hot enough to burn an inquisitive child and the best bit is that unlike expensive to run tumble dryers it costs just 5 pence an hour to run! How did we manage without it? Quick answer to that one! We didn’t! Managing and washing did not come in the same sentence at all! I just would like to finish by saying that I was not sent this product to review. It’s fair to say I always give my honest opinion of everything I am sent by PR companies to review for my blog but because I am lucky and am sent lots I don’t have much time to devote to writing about other things I find I like. This was not a freebie and I was not under any obligation to review it but felt it is so good and such a help that I really must write about it anyway! It’s the best early Christmas present and at £84.99 I’d say it’s money well spent, very well spent! (They also do a smaller version if you really need to space save even more than us)!

The airer can be half up as on the left and this works well up against a wall or both sides can be out and it can be placed in the centre of the room like on the right.

Folded flat and against the wall you can see how compact it is.

I’m not at all worried about the children touching it when on as it doesn’t get hot enough to burn them.

For more information about this and all Lakeland products please see their website www.lakeland.co.uk.

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