Title is pretty much it.
To what degree do you follow the care instructions that come attached to your clothes?
I’m a “completely ignore them” person. Colors and whites go in together, everything gets a normal wash cycle in hot water, everything goes in the dryer on high heat.
I only ever separate laundry by item thickness: heavy/bulky items like jeans, towels, sheets, blankets, etc. go together, then there’s everything else, just because the heavy/bulky items need to dry for longer.
I do a load of cold that includes shirts (I hang up all of my shirts so they don’t shrink), synthetic workout clothes, bras and a couple pairs of dress pants. That load doesn’t go in the dryer.
Everything else gets hot wash and hot dry. I don’t know that there is a heat setting on my dryer - it’s pretty basic.
I don’t worry about colors and whites. Well, I don’t do jeans and whites together - jeans and other heavy stuff get their own hot wash load, just because I don’t like to mix weights.
What are these “care instructions” of which you speak?
Oh yes. I like my clothes to last and not shrink.
Delicates (blouses, cardigans, bras etc) get cold wash delicate cycle and no dryer.
“Regular clothes” (t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans etc) get cold wash regular cycle and medium heat dryer. (I’ll grab jeans and pants out when they’re damp to prevent shrinkage.
Towels get a separate hot wash (with bleach) and dry.
Sheets get a separate warm wash (with bleach) and dry.
Undies get a separate hot wash (with bleach) and dry.
I don’t have a lot of red/pink/fuschia clothes, but those get their own wash, following the ‘delicate’ or ‘regular’ rules.
I separate into light, bright, and dark loads (also sheets and towels get their own loads, and on different days). Other than that, it’s Lord of the Flies. If a garment can’t handle whatever setting my Magical Mystery Machine wants to wash it on (I have a fancy LG that like…takes pictures of the load, or something) then I don’t have time for it. I knit my own socks out of wool blend yarn. They wash and dry just fine. If they can, anything reasonable can.
I was taught to do laundry correctly. Then, I ended up living alone and simply not generating the volume of laundry necessary to separate them appropriately. So, “dry clean only” get dry cleaned. Everything else - well…
I do choose clothing knowing that I don’t use the “delicate” setting. I have to really, really, really love a piece of clothing that requires handwashing because I don’t want to hand wash. I’ve had the same bottle of Woolite for years - and most of it has gone into the regular wash on days that I needed to do a load and was out of laundry detergent.
Something else: Wash everything cold. Hang dry shirts and synthetics, tumble dry high jeans, socks and towels.
I try hard to avoid owning clothes that need special care. If something is dry clean only, I follow that religiously. I generally wash expensive (by my standards) or formal clothes carefully according to their instructions. I wash towels separately, hot. Everything else (i.e. normal everyday clothes), when not extremely dirty, are all thrown into one load regardless of any consideration - warm, or else cold if there are black or bright red items in there.
ETA: Anything brand new and black or bright red gets washed by itself, or with things that won’t mind being harmed, for a few times.
Everything goes into one load. If the clothes can’t handle that, too bad. I don’t want to wear such wimpy clothing anyway!
I’d imagine there is some Doper who follows every bizarre and excessive clothing instruction, to wash separately in cold water and to stretch it out rather than putting it in a dryer.
I wear t-shirts, jeans, ‘whites’, socks, and pajamas.
T-shirts get their own load. They’re all plain blue of roughly the same shade.
The ‘whites’, socks (all black), and pajamas (blue) go in another load. If they’re bleeding into each other I haven’t noticed it.
The jeans get washed whenever I think they’ve gotten dirty or smelly. (Biannually, maybe?) They get their own load.
The washer has settings for cottons and so forth; I let it tell me how to wash things. Hot? Cold? Bleach? How should I know?
Yeah, I’m male.
I separate whites from colors, but that’s all was the perfect option for me. I never look at the labels and have no idea anyway what the symbols mean (well, I can tell the temperatures, but I don’t care: 40 °C for colors, 60 °C for whites). Never failed, never had no other washing accident other than the occasionally shredding of a piece by the washing machine. But that dosen’t depend on the temperature and rather is a mystery like the disappearing socks…
I have ruined so many clothes that I do try to follow instructions, now. After years of crying over spilled bleach. I use only cold water and separate colors and whites. At this late date I am adept at picking clothes for their ease of laundering. Lazy, I am.
Generally, everything gets thrown in with everything else. I tend to stay with cotton and from a very narrow color palette so it doesn’t much matter. I have some blend fiber slacks I pay a little closer attention to–gentle wash cycle, hang to dry. Mostly I avoid situations that require me to wear them in the first place.
I voted that I follow instructions to the letter. My washer has a “hand wash” setting, so hand wash items get that. Seemingly unlike most of the US, I don’t throw everything in the dryer; my washing gets line dried except when laundry needs to be done and it’s wet outside.
Separate whites and coloureds, don’t wash towels with clothes that pick up lint, silk undies get hand wash setting. If the label says don’t tumble dry, then never tumble dry it.
I don’t think I’ve used bleach in a wash more than a couple of times in the last year.
Little Pianola got all fashionable when she turned 15, and started buying clothes with complex and irritating washing instructions. After I ruined a few blouses, she learned to take over her own laundry.
I installed one of those aeration laundry feeds two years ago, which clean your stuff with only a teaspoon of detergent, so I now wash everything — even towels and jeans — in cold water. And I dry everything low-heat permanent press, I just give the heavy things extra time.
This describes what I do to a tee: buy (almost) zero items that need esoteric rules - or almost any rules - to wash, then treat everything the same. No muss, no fuss.
(Okay, I have gotten in the habit of saving up work shirts and such to wash as a batch - too many things-hidden-in-kid-pockets lately, but that’s it.)
I only buy washable things. Rayon is a crime against humanity. Wash in cold. Nothing runs in cold (unless it’s some hand-dyed indian, as in from India, not native american, blanket, which will get a separate wash IF I buy it, which I probably won’t.)
Mostly ignore. Everything gets thrown in together. If it’s a special piece or something that feels like an unusual fabric I read the directions. So rarely.
More like smart. If it is a fabric that I know needs ironing? Screw that noise, I’ll buy something else that doesn’t. I’ve got better things to do with my time, and I bet most other people do too.