What do kittens and heated airers have in common? Our writer tells all … | Life and style

Testing heated airers is like weighing kittens. There’s a meme in which a cat’s weight is recorded by a scale as “0kg” because it’s too light to register. I had similar (though less cute) results when trying to compare the best heated clothes airers by weighing laundry. My wet washing left my inaccurate digital bathroom scales unmoved at zero.

There’s little diversity in the world of heated airers. I sourced a dozen: some had triangle frames, some were winged, and others – such as my favourite, the Lakeland Dry:Soon Deluxe 3-tier airer (currently reduced for Black Friday) – had embroidered covers. Basically, though, they’re all clothes horses that you plug in. Finding clear distinctions between them meant I had to devise fair, quantifiable tests, chief among which was a laundry weigh-in every half hour to measure how efficiently each airer dried an identical load. I ended up splitting each load into batches for weighing in turn (and turn, and turn again) on my tiny but accurate kitchen scale.

Nights drew in, leaves turned gold and danced to the ground, and I was still weighing knickers. Meanwhile, my husband took measurements with an infrared thermometer, stopwatch, power monitor and tape measure, demonstrating extraordinary patience in a man who’d already been reduced to swears, if not actual tears, when constructing the JML DriBuddi and others that had arrived in pieces.

Soon, our two-up-two-down house was a forest of aluminium bars. Some of the largest airers took up nearly a square metre of floor space each (the Dunelm XL 3-tier is a fast worker, but dainty it ain’t) and were tall enough to fence in my 4’11” self.

Was all this faff really necessary? You bet it was. The internet heaves with marketing content styled as reviews; I wanted to offer something meaningful and accurate that you haven’t read 20 times before.

After weeks of testing, I developed favourites that I’d barely even noticed when initially comparing their specs. The Dry:Soon Deluxe airer ranked low at first because of its high price. Why pay north of £250 for a balmy climbing frame when you can buy airers for well under £100? But my thick socks dried faster than in the tumble dryer. And call me shallow, but if I have to share my living space with a clothes horse that’s bigger than me, I want it to look nice. Other airers appealed to me for more singular reasons. The winged airers from Black+Decker and Dunelm took up so little space and used so little electricity that I used them as towel stands.

Despite wanting some floor space back, we were all sad to see the airers go. But where samples are not required to be sent back, it does feel gratifying to be able to offer them a deserving home.

So I’m donating them to two organisations doing important work in and around my adoptive city of Southampton. The first is Scratch, which provides services and furniture for people experiencing poverty, and then there’s Stop Domestic Abuse, a charity that offers safe spaces and support for victims and survivors. If they make my vulnerable neighbours’ winter more comfortable, they’ll have more than earned their spot in the Filter.

Read our full guide to the best heated clothes airers

This week’s picks

Editor’s pick

We all know a Swiftie, right? So, when we decided to create a gift guide for all the Taylor superfans out there, especially after her record-smashing Eras tour, there was only one person to ask: the Guardian’s Laura Snapes. But rather than fill it with merch and cat-themed tat, Laura had a better idea. From Taylor’s favourite kind of lip colour to a brilliant songwriting book, she hand-picked gifts that go beyond the obvious. Consider it your Christmas Swift guide (sorry).

Ps our guide to the best women’s boots is coming into its own now we’re stomping through piles of leaves (what a gorgeous autumn we’re having). We’ve all been buying M&S’s magnificent Chelsea boots.

Hannah Booth
Editor, the Filter

In case you missed it …