Julien Buratto and Davide Bongianni, a project manager and graphic designer, respectively, at a Milan web company, have launched a website called stendibiancheria.net (Italian for “hang out the laundry”) that uses a mathematical formula and forecasts from weather.com to arrive at a “laundry index.”
In late August, the start of variable weather in the fall in Italy, they added a free text-messaging service so users know when it’s time to head home and pull in their clothes off of the clothesline. About 600 subscribers have signed up so far.
The laundry index is available for seven Italian cities and a handful of international locales, including New York, Paris and Tokyo. The mathematical formula includes temperature, humidity, wind speed, UV rays and atmospheric pressure.
The result is a number on a scale of 1 to 100; the higher the number, the faster your sheets dry.