My sister’s ex-father-in-law repaired appliances. He said that everyone uses too much laundry detergent. It gunks up the machine. You should only use half of what is recommended.
Ok. Say you’ve gotten the care labels right and separation of like items right. The amount of soap and other additives sussed out. You load the washer add the right amount of soap (or, how about Tide pods? no measuring needed, ha!)
Then you have to choose between…IDK…something like 45 choices on the dial to turn the washer on. Gah! The only choice I’m sure of is cold/cold. They say it twice. Convinces me it’s correct. Don’t go near the pause/lid lock button. That one effs up everything. I had to call tech support for that button once. Guess what the cure was? Yep, you guessed right. Unplug the washer, count to 10. Plug it back in. Fixed!
Sometimes when I open my front load washer to pull the clothes out, there’s still actual suds near the door. I’m probably using too much soap, huh? Here I was cursing my washers crappy rinsing ability.
Any soap manufacturer would explain that you are not. It’s like toothpaste–remember how all the ads show a very full brush?
IME it’s from using non-HE soap. That’s a pretty good way to muck up a machine.
The machines I am familiar with will detect an oversuds fault condition and halt automatically. But I assume that is only triggered by way too much soap.
Imagine how sheep caught in the rain feel.
You and Wally…
That’s great!
GF: "Hey you’re supposed to separate your underwear from your jeans when you wash them.’
BF: “Yeah, I know…but I don’t have a stick.”
Not my joke but a good one.
If you don’t buy whites you don’t have to worry about it. Socks, towels, underwear, t-shirts all come in different colors.
Around 4 years ago I started just adding about 1/4 inch of liquid soap in the little cup they give you regardless of load size. I also switched from Tide to Extra at about half the price. I haven’t noticed one difference in the cleanliness of my clothes.
Or at least how they felt.
iswyd
Well, the OP had a choice of wash-with-no-soap, or applying the college sniff test for cleanliness.
-picks up shorts- snifff… “hmm, old socks… this one is good”
-picks up t-shirt- snifffff… waits for the room to stop spinning… “nope, that one’s old”
Your husband was fired? That is what I let my wife believe too, but actually I was relieved of this duty. Therefore I cannot add anything sensible to this thread, but I am truly amazed at what am reading. The world is way more complicated than I thought.
To compensate, she is relieved of kitchen duties.
I like the concept of an “empty” toothbrush. Trying to picture a full one now.
That was baad, baad, baad.
I know some people will get mad but here is the truth:
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She’s a woman. She was taught to do laundry one way and darn it, that’s the way it should be done.
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She’s a woman. That means she has a keener sense of smell and cleanliness so she might smell and see things you dont.
For example my wife sees wrinkles and stains and smells things on clothes I dont. She insists on all shirts have to be hung up to dry and in a certain fashion. She’s right, they dry better and stay in better shape than going thru the dryer.
A friend of my father grew up on a hard-scrabble ranch during the depression here in Arizona and was one of six kids. The ranch adjacent to them was owned by a bachelor who would buy a pair of jeans and wear them a year without washing them. He would then buy a new pair and donate the old ones to the friend’s family who were poorer than he was.
Mother would set up a large kettle over a fire in the yard and when it was good and boiling, drop the donated jeans in with a stick and boil them for an hour or two before washing them the ordinary way and giving them to whoever they fit.
According to a woman I know who works in a laundromat, the biggest mistakes people make are putting too many clothes into the machine and using too much detergent. They end up with wet, dirty, soapy clothes.
She’s on your case because she’s probably had experiences with slobs in the past. You let them take an inch, they’ll take a mile. If she doesn’t berate you for doing the laundry wrong the first time you do it, you’ll keep doing it, and in a few months she’ll be left with a grease-stain-covered smelly slob of a bf who says, “What? You didn’t have a problem with it before. I smell fine.” I know the type, and she’s taking precautions even if you’re not that type.