Do you follow the care instructions on your clothes?

I follow them to the letter for things that are expensive. I otherwise just follow the method it says about dry cleaning and such. I do, however, have very few clothes that need any of that, but there are times where I need to wear a suit–albeit, not in a long time.

I do, however, follow directions when washing other people’s clothes at times–that’s when they may be expensive. Sometimes the women in my life want extra fancy dresses.

“This shirt is dry clean only. Which means, it’s dirty”. Mitch Hedberg

All tags and washing instructions are removed after purchase and before use, never to be read even once. Most fabrics are artificial now and there is no need for instructions on how to wash plastic.

I’m a 42 year old man and single. I just let my clothes pile up until the two baskets i have are full and then just carry them down to the laundry room. I have a laundry bag in my closet that I throw my dirty sheets and pillowcases and when that is full I throw them in the wash. I don’t seperate by colors or anything. I can’t afford any clothes that would need to be dry cleaned.

Ditto here. I wear jeans and casual tops. I have nothing fancy to ruin anymore, not that I ever had much in the first place. My big thing is not over-drying laundry. I believe that wears things out faster than anything else. Lint is proof of that. Back when I was using pay machines that gave you an hour to dry, I always got everything out at about the forty minute mark. Most of the time it would all be dry but if something was a bit damp, I’d hang it up or lay it out for a bit.

I voted “I follow them to the letter for certain specific items or types of clothing”

I have a lot of costume pieces (mostly handmade medieval reproductions for the SCA, but also steampunk/cosplayfantasy /LARP stuff) made from stuff like fine wool, linen, silk and velvet, with elaborate trims and embellishment - that I wear fairly regularly. That shit gets hand-washed (or dry-cleaned for the velvets) and air-dried.

Jeans and t-shirts and chinos and cotton work shirts, I don’t much care. I rarely wear white, so colour bleed isn’t often an issue.

I have shrunk woollen clothes due to my negligence, so I try to avoid that. Otherwise, no worries. I’ve never had problems with colour bleed or anything else typically worried about.

I wash blacks and very dark colors together, and everything else together. Normal dryer settings.

I try not to buy clothes that need anything other than that.

I don’t buy things that need dry cleaning except coats.

Everything except kitchen towels and white(ish) tshirts gets washed in cold together. The kitchen towels and tshirts get washed in hot. Medium heat on the dryer for everything except bras (heat KILLS them) and certain synthetic shirts which do better hanging in the bathroom.

Incidentally, if you’re like me and have clothes to hang in the bathroom a lot of the time (I swim 3x a week), I’ve found the best way to dry that super wet stuff is to install a second shower curtain rod on the back side of the tub parallel to the one holding the shower curtain. I use plastic clothes pins hanging from shower curtain hooks to hold the clothes.

It’s been ages since I had anything that bleeds color. I used to do a red load because I had a shirt that bled badly. I once watched a couple of college kids doing laundry for the first time. First of all, he came back to where I was folding my clothes and started stuffing them in the dryer. Then he asked “where does the soap go?”. I directed him to the washers where the female of the couple was. She explained that you need to sort by whites and colors. He was sorting right along until he came to a black and white striped shirt. An argument ensued. I left before they figured it out.

That’s brilliant.
Where were you years ago when I was swimming 3x/week?

I completely ignore to the point where I don’t ever bother to look at the care instructions. Which might mean I AM following the instructions accidentally. But I’ll never know.

We have a high end, front loading washer with enough lights and buttons for an airplane cockpit and my wife is pretty meticulous about using it. Unfortunately, when it was installed they mixed up the hot and cold lines so that it ALWAYS used hot water for cold and the only time it used cold was when hot was specifically requested. Nobody noticed until I was working on the water lines one day, over 6 months. As far as I know, no clothes shrank or ran.

I do separate lights/whites from darks. Almost everything gets a cold wash, low heat dry. I handwash bras and hang them to dry. Jeans air dry. Stuff labeled dry clean only either is not purchased or I do a gentle/handwash cycle after a few wears. I wear scrubs 5 + days a week so mostly it’s low key laundry, scrubs wash and dry like a dream

I’m not a laundry nazi, but I do try to follow directions.
Our 40-year-old washer can only use one temperature, so we chose cold. Clothes are sorted by color and weight and washed in Woolite. Except for a few items, they are tumble dry low. (If Mr. CK does that load, those items get tumble dry as well.) We do not have a clothesline or space in the house for all clothes to be hung, and our water is very hard. I don’t care to wear clothes that feel like cardboard, so into the dryer they go.
Towels and sheets are washed cold in a strong detergent with non-chlorine bleach and dried hot.
I use Dryel for the few dry clean only items, and only when they can stand up on their own.

Downy Wrinkle Releaser Plus is good for* that one thing* I wanted to wear but isn’t clean.