I usually make 3 piles of laundry to wash according to color and not fabric: black clothes go in one pile, every other clothe I own goes into a second pile (colors white to navy blue). The third pile is for my bed linens and towels, (100% cotton, so I can wash them to 140°F)
Now, I don’t know if I should make more piles instead, because my bed linens and clothes sometimes combine several colors and I don’t know if they bleed and I’m slowly degrading them:
I was thinking of making a pile for black clothes, one for white clothes, one for every other color clothe I own (I have purple, yellow and green stuff plus denims), one for my bed linens (all of them are mixed colors, including dark and clear colors like red, orange, green and black in one piece) and another pile for my towels (one color only, but different ones, including green, purple, white, yellow and navy blue).
Regarding fabrics, I have 100% cotton, 100% merino wool, 100% polyester and mixed fabrics, so the number of piles can grow considerably.
I live alone, so sometimes I can need a lot of time to get a laundry worth pile of stuff to wash if I create as many piles as I suggested here.
I may be overthinking it but I’d like to do the laundry the right way and keep the stuff I already have in good condition. How do you do it?
i just wear dark clothing
I put whites into one pile, which allows me to use bleach if I want. The rest I split into “rough” or “heavy” fabrics (think jeans) and more “gentle” fabrics (think slacks). I’m not worried about the colors so much as wear on the clothes that can’t take a beating by getting mixed.
Basically this
Ive seen clothes bleed like twice, once was a set of dark sheets I washed for the first time, which bled a shitload, and the other was a cheap promotional shirt I bleached which turned the water black.
We don’t, we separate into bulky clothes (sweats, jeans, heavy shirts), everything else, and delicates. We wash with only cold water (modern machines and detergents don’t need hot water and it won’t get things any more clean, it just wastes energy). Bulky goes in first, then normal, then delicates. I’ve done this for at least 10 years with zero issues across a variety of machines and water hardnesses.
Same here. And I only separate by weight to help my dryer out. Now my normal clothes are done a half hour sooner and my jeans don’t come out damp.
Everything together in cold water
Same.
You’re completely overthinking it. I keep white separate. Colors get their own basket. Denim goes in a separate piles after it really smells (it honestly shouldn’t be washed very much). Towels get their own load due to shedding. Sheets sometimes go in with the colors.
I do everything on cold. I use the plainest of plain detergent. If there’s a smell in polyester or nylon clothes I’ll put in some Clorox 2.
Dryer on low or medium until mostly dry. I’ve got a fancy one with a moisture sensor that actually works so I let that determine how long. Usually 25-30 minutes.
Citation: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/wirecutter-show-podcast-20240821-better-laundry-secret/
I don’t
Yeah if it doesn’t survive the gauntlet then it’s not meant to be. For like suits, coats, and other things that probably shouldn’t be washed I’ll send them to the cleaners.
I keep and wash my whites separate in hot or warm water. Everything else goes together in cold water. Wool stuff gets air dried, while the rest gets the dryer.
Add a cup of white vinegar to the wash with the clothes if anything is extra smelly, during the wash cycle/beginning.
You’re overthinking it.
Modern fabric dyes are a lot better than 40 years ago. Like, don’t wash something dark the first time with a bunch of white stuff, but after the first wash or two it definitely doesn’t matter
And on the other side of the equation, modern detergents are way better and being colorfast.
Cheap clothes bleed a lot. Specially synthetics. It’s horrible honestly.
Like what cheap are we talking about here? Ordering from overseas?
Walmart or other cheap places are perfectly fine.
Are you washing in hot water? My clothes are far from expensive but I’ve never had that issue. I wash in cold water though which apparently doesn’t have the issue so much
I don’t think I do it correctly tbh, but since I have to drive to the laundromat to do my laundry, and pay out the ass for it ($12 per fucking load!!), all I want is to get in and out of there as fast as humanly possible. So I have two piles, one for all my clothes regardless of color or material, and the other for sheets and towels, regardless of color. I haven’t noticed any colors bleeding or extra degradation, and my clothes generally look pretty undamaged and crisp. I also typically use the hottest cycle for everything, which again, probably isn’t great, but it seems to work for me.
The cost of doing laundry is insane. I started doing mine by hand at home.
$12? I’m glad I was already lying down when I read that. It was only $2 (total) per load when I was in college 15 years ago, and I was already trying to min-max it then. I’d go back to hand washing and line drying if I saw that.
Red, orange, yellow, green, brown in one pile. Blue, grey, black in a second pile. White stuff in a third.
I have hot wash for towels and bed stuff. Cold for literally everything else. I’ve never had anything bleed, even new stuff.
I’m a little obsessive about this myself.
Usually I have
- Dark colours, woolens, and delicates
- Stuff I think could run (raw denim, etc)
- Whites
- Light colours and stuff I don’t care about fading, which can be washed either way.
While most non-colour detergents don’t contain bleach any more, they contain optical brighteners that absorb UV and emit white light, to make whites look “whiter than white”. This can make dark colours, and especially blacks, look dull grey. Other than that you don’t usually have to worry about most colours, especially after the first wash. There are exceptions to this, such as raw denim which runs like crazy. You can also get “colour catcher” sheets for peace of mind that stop runs.
Usually I use a non-biological delicates wool detergent for dark colours, woolens, and delicates, which I wash together, on a wool cycle. It doesn’t hurt to wash something more delicately than it’s supposed to be washed, and it means I don’t need to do as many loads. Sometimes I’ll throw light colours in with this if I have room. Anything “runny” I’ll wash with like colours, at least for the first few washes.
Whites, light colours, and stuff I don’t care about looking dull like towels gets the cheapest own brand biological detergent.
If you have dark coloured bedding you may want to get biological colour detergent, I don’t.
I don’t separate colours, only new clothes I put in with towels, sheets or clothes that I wouldn’t care if colour bled.
I never wash with hot water, only warm or cold. Low heat dry and cold water washing is really the best effort-for-performance to get your clothes to last, you can hang dry some of them but I personally can’t be arsed.
