Electric dryers are by far the biggest draw on electricity in suburbia today, in homes with oil hot water & heat.
Of course the easy answer is the clothes line. Clothes lines are cool, in fact people who use clothes lines are the coolest people around.
There have been clothes dryers made using solar hot air collectors mounted on the roof circulating hot air through a clothes drying rack, but the good old fashioned clothes line is still #1.
Electric Clothes driers should be taxed and a picture of a big lump of dirty brown coal and Manhattan under water should be painted on the front of every one produced.
I confess to being an electric clothes drierer myself, but I vow to change.
UPDATE:
Heres a table of appliances and how much power they use in watts. As you will see dryer uses 4000 watts. Some may use 5000 watts. Very large AC systems may use this much as well. Electric heating systems may use more. I will say electric dryers are the largest and least essential draws in most homes.
Where I live most people use oil hot water heaters, but electric hot water heaters are big draws too. The answer to this is
solar hot water heating, it is a dirty shame we don't use more solar hot water heating. A solar hot water system can be bought for ~2,000 dollars and will preheat the water for your normal hot water heater. A system will pay for itself in 4-5 years and last for decades.
Solar hot water, solar photovoltaic panels can reduce a suburban homes fossil fuel use by 90% and it is being done today. I will try to find the link to a page I saw about a guy who did this.
UPDATE 2: I fixed the wording of the diary title a bit, to be more specific. The electric dryer is the largest easily replacable appliance in suburbia today in homes with oil hot water & heat. Air conditioning could draw more total current if used frequently.
I will follow this clothes diary up in my next diary on the #1 toxic threat from clothes cleaning, perchloroethylene, which is used in traditional dry cleaning shops as a solvent to clean the clothes. This chlorinated solvent, which is a dioxin and incredibly toxic in minute quanities often acumulates in toxic pools underneath dry cleaners from spills and sloppy handling, who often go out of business and never clean up their toxic legacy. It is still in use, but more on that in my next diary!