“Wash everything in cold, dry everything on low. The clothes will look better and last longer.”
Nope.
Different materials, stains, and various other conditions will need different parameters to become clean. IMO, clean clothes look better. With the exception of very fragile fabrics, I have not noticed a decrease in shelf life when cleaning clothes according to their needs.
As far as I know, the pro to washing on cold is that you don’t need to sort by color, not that it’s gentler on fabrics.
My policy is to wash everything in cold, don’t put anything in the dryer. Everything either lays flat or hangs to dry. Just anecdotal, I know, but my clothes last forever. About the only kind of wear I get is stains. Today I’m wearing a top and skirt from 2009, and they look brand new.
I also don’t wash everything every time I wear it (socks and underwear excepted, of course). I usually aim for three wearings before washing, although casual pants like jeans and cords go much longer.
Of course I work in an office environment and don’t have any outdoor hobbies. I rarely leave the city. So I’m not dealing with excessive amounts of dirt.
Counter anecdote: A roommate and I had identical bright yellow t-shirts given to all freshmen and new transfers at my college. Over the summer mine got washed and dried in the drier, his got hang dried. Next September mine was still bright yellow and his was nearly white.
I wash just about everything in cold, tho if I bleach whites, that’s done warm. I also prefer to hang clothes out, but I will use the dryer based on weather or the need for speed. The dryer is set on medium heat and I use the sensor setting - theoretically it knows when everything is dry.
I haven’t noticed any huge difference in the condition or life-cycle of our clothes. Personally, I like the smell of line-dried garments, not to mention the energy-savings. But cold water seems to work just fine.
I wash in cold but I still separate whites from colors. I use the delicate setting unless I’m washing jeans and/or work pants. With the delicate setting, I’ve noticed that many items I would’ve otherwise tossed are still wearable.
Always dry on “moisture sensing” which is mostly air dry with medium-low heat briefly blasting through every so often. It takes a lot longer to dry, of course. OTOH I’ve noticed that clothes are much less likely to shrink, especially the cotton blends.
I’m a big believer in mesh laundry bags if you have very delicate items like bras or hosiery. Those automatically are hung after washing. Ditto anything that’s Under Armour-ish.
Since the majority of my clothes are t-shirts, sweatshirts and jeans, I put everything in the wash at the same time with cold water and it all goes into the dryer on the “Normal” settings. The only real exception is that if I have some new piece of clothing that clearly has a lot of dye in it (like a bright red hoodie) I’ll run that through the wash by itself the first few times, but even then it’ll sit in the dryer until the rest of the clothes can join it.
Since I don’t have to wear ‘nice’ clothes that often, when they do need to get washed, I toss them in with everything else and make sure they get pulled out of the dryer and hung/folded right away so they don’t wrinkle. T-shirts that are worn under a sweatshirt…I’m not too concerned about them.
Because our washer is 40+ years old, it isn’t fully functional. We have to wash everything in one temperature, and we have chosen cold. We sort clothes by color and fabric weight. Dryer is always low unless we are washing towels or sheets. I get compliments on a simple t-shirt-knit dress I bought in 1995, so I guess we’re doing something right.
‘Looking better’ and ‘lasting longer’ may be at odds with each other depending on what looking better means. Cold washing and drying on low might make clothes last longer, but the cold wash may not remove dirt and stains as well. But if the clothes are relatively clean before washing they may look better just from lasting longer. I would think the number of washes and how you treat your clothes otherwise has more effect though.
You should probably ask someone who actually washes clothes though. I haven’t done much of that for many years, and when I did I wasn’t very discriminating about any of the details, I just put clothes in the washer until it was full and pressed start with whatever the machine was already set to.
I take a Darwinian approach to laundry - wash everything in hot, dry everything on high, and let the weakest go to the wall. Any garment of mine that wants to stick around had better be able to survive without any mollycoddling.
My wife complains because I wear clothes for years and years - everything I currently have on is at least five years old. I have a nice tie-dyed T-shirt that is at least twenty years old.
Regards,
Shodan
Do you buy everything too big to start? What fabrics are you wearing that don’t shrink?
I wash everything in cold, I always have.
I wash one load of clothes a week, everything together with cold water. I dry on low, removing clothes as they near dry and hanging them.
My gf who does multiple small loads at various temperates gets annoyed when she notices my clothes look good.
Modern casual clothing (exempting dress clothes and winter outerwear for both men and women, and also exempting the currently fashionable tissue-thin slub-cotton reject fiber t-shirts) is designed to be durable throughout a lifetime of ‘normal’ use, which usually means washing and drying in warm water and warm air.
Hot water does more damage than hot air, sunlight does more damage (to finishes and color) than hot air, and washers with center-stick agitators do the most damage of all.
If you don’t tend to have color-based accidents, there is no clothing-based reason really to use cold water. Cold does save energy, and most detergents work decently well in tap-temp water, but I would always suggest washing anything that touches your private parts in at LEAST warm water, and more importantly, RINSED in warm water. (Or double rinsed if your washer is a modern asshole and doesn’t like the ‘warm rinse’ option because it interferes with the ‘energy efficient’ certification it has).
Drying shouldn’t be on hot unless you’re really strapped for time, and anything with more than about 3% spandex or other stretchy material should not ever be dried at all.
Lasciel: costume and fashion creator. Has done so much industrial-loads of laundry.
Towels are washed and rinsed in hot water.
Everything else is pretty much washed in cold and either hung up to dry, laid flat to dry, or dried on medium. But I have an office job, so I don’t get very sweaty. I also wash clothing (excepting socks/undies) every 3 wears or so, except in summer. Then it’s all washed each time.
My clothes last forever. My favorite blouse is almost 20 years old.
I change size and give away my clothes before they wear out, except for bras, which all self-destruct when the model I like is no longer made.
I could see that if he hung it in the sun and left it out all day instead of taking it down once it was dry. Sunlight will bleach some fabric dyes.
Underwear, bath towels, and kitchen towels/dishcloths get washed in hot water. Everything else is washed in cold. From late spring to mid-fall I hang my laundry outside except for socks, underwear, and kitchen towels/dishcloths. NEVER put my jeans in the dryer. I have clotheslines in my basement for hanging them and anything else that requires “lay flat to dry”. I wear my jeans usually 3 times before I wash them. Cardigan-type sweaters (anything that’s a top layer) gets washed when needed.
Hullo fellow laundry Nazi. (Which is what I get called)
About once a week I dump all my dirty clothes into the washer and use the “cold wash, cold rinse” setting. Everything then goes into the dryer on the “cottons” setting. Not long ago I was with my son when we found some of his baby pictures. I was looking at one in particular where he was an infant asleep on my chest. He laughed and said “Hey, dad, you have on the same shirt as in the picture!”. I looked, 'twas true.
He is 26 years old. I think my simple laundry routine works just fine.