Why Doesn’t Anyone in New Zealand Own a Clothes Dryer?

I wrote this in 2016 or 2017 during the two years I lived in New Zealand. Some details — prices, hours, what’s open — may have changed, but the experience and my love for this place haven’t.

Yesterday marked the end of my second week living in New Zealand and the end of my first week of work. There are lots of things to write about life in corporate America versus corporate New Zealand but I’ll save those for another day. Today I need to talk about clothes dryers.

Kiwis are not fond of the things. All of the furnished apartments I looked at when I first arrived came with both a washer and a dryer, but apparently that’s not the norm here. My partner is a native Kiwi and he thought it was hilarious when we met and I asked him why he was hanging up his clothes after washing them. I assumed his dryer was broken. When he said he didn’t have one I was speechless. When he said most Kiwis don’t, I had no idea what to say.

I don’t mean to sound elitist — I understand not everyone can afford a dryer and I was one of those people for many years of my life. But here, people can afford them and choose not to. Turns out my partner’s theory — that it’s about electricity costs — is basically right. Running a dryer costs about $1 a load, and about half of Kiwis say they only use one in emergencies because it’s too expensive. Only about one in four Kiwis regularly uses a dryer at all. The rest hang everything out — for the fresh air smell, for the electricity savings, and apparently just because that’s what you do.

I’m apparently not the first American to find this baffling. An American TikToker went viral a few years after I moved here asking the exact same question, and the response from Kiwis and Australians was essentially: “The real question should be why do Americans use a dryer when the sun and wind is free?” Fair point, honestly. I still don’t care.

Walking through Auckland I laughed to notice all the balconies draped in washing. The stores sell clothes airers front and centre — I didn’t even know what an airer was until I’d traveled in Europe. Our apartment building has signs saying you can’t dry clothes on the balcony, in an attempt to appear more upscale. People are absolutely doing it anyway. And the American who stubbornly dries everything in the dryer is apparently the odd one out.