Probably not necessary, but as @SmartAleq says, sometimes not sorting will ruin your whole day.
What shocked me was how little detergent you’re supposed to use with an HE washer. You never need to use more than two tablespoons (at most, for a giant load), according to this (possibly paywalled). Two tablespoons is like the lowest line on my liquid detergent measuring cup.
I do, and my clothes seem to last a really long time.
But this is partly because I have enough white clothing - plus sheets, etc - to do a separate wash with glo-white in. I wash those at a higher temperature than I would for most other clothes too.
We do underwear, socks etc. on “normal” which is semi hot water. Outerwear, shirts, pants, blouses all go on “Permanent Press” which is cold water and some other stuff I don’t remember.
We haven’t sorted our laundry for many years, and it doesn’t make any difference. We just dump everything in together. There are more important things in life to obsess over.
I sort my laundry: things that i want to wash in hot water and dry on hot go in one load. Things that i want to wash in warm water and dry on gentle go in the other load. Things that can be washed and dried either way go in whichever load has more room.
I do avoid washing brand new red or black things with the whites, at least the first time. But i haven’t had an issue with clothes bleeding dye in years.
Back when everyone sorted “Darks, Lights, and Reds”, I liked giving my Goth students a hard time. Whenever Gilly The Perky Goth walked in late, I’d announce “Annnnd here we have Gilly, who’s made a choice of philosophical world-view, based on Never Having To Do a Load of Lights Ever Again.”
But now? I haven’t separated ANYTHING in years. Drives my mom and sister crazy as they separate based on those hard-to-read “Laundry Instructions” on a tiny tag inside a shirt.
No mishaps yet, even washing new brightly-colored t-shirts with my old white ones.
I do the same single load of laundry every week-- 3 pairs of jeans, a few t-shirts, a couple of nightgowns, socks & undies, towels. Over and over. The same stuff. All together. There’s no excess dye left in anything.
Exactly. White clothes do look a little bit dingy if they’re washed with colored clothes that bleed a little. So, I don’t buy them. Most of my light colored clothes are a little bit muddier than they were when I bought them, most of my dark colored clothes are a little more washed out. The very few items I care about, I do take very good care of - but for the rest, they go into the washer together and come out clean, but less vibrant.
And I’m ok with that.
For comparison, in the late seventies i once threw a new red sweatshirt into a load of underwear. All my white underwear turned pink. The bras ended up two-tone, because one fabric picked up more of the color than the other did.
Mixing whites and colored clothing didn’t produce subtly less good results. It meant you no longer had whites.
The colored clothing faded faster then, too. But it did that even if you didn’t throw light clothing into the wash.
No bra?
That was covered by “undies.”
Cthulu doesn’t live in the dryer. He sometimes lives in red-dyed cheap cotton pants from Thailand. Otherwise, not necessary to sort laundry.
Like others, I separate by weight and heat. Undies, pajamas and workout clothes in a load, jeans and towels in a load, and tops plus non-dryer stuff in another load on cold.
I don’t think I’ve ever separated by color. My mom had us doing our own laundry at a young age so I never had enough stuff to separate. Now that I’m older I have more clothes so I just wash less frequently and separate loads.
Former and Future Long-time Bachelor agree.
LOL! Yep, every special towels!
A resounding yes to Shout sheets. When I was widowed there simply wasn’t enough laundry if I separated, so a friend told me about these. I’ve used faithfully since, with great results. The only thing I separate out are towels. Too much lint.
I’ve never separated my laundry and I’ve never noticed any problems. I always wash on the cold setting. I don’t think I actually have any white clothes I actually wear though. (I have one white dress shirt in case I have to work an event that requires it, but that hasn’t happened in years now.)
Fashion statement!
They actually looked quite nice. They’d been getting a little old and ratty, and the dye job perked them up.
I am not now, nor have I ever, sorted laundry. One batch is whatever fits in the machine. The second is what didn’t fit in the first. Not once had a discoloration nor a shrinkage. Going on 35ish yrs doing my own laundry. The wife refused to allow me to do her laundry yet I still got yelled at for not “helping out”