Yeah, like on the sitcoms. 
LOL!
Yes I fully realize that getting fired was all part of his strategy. But I simply cannot live in a home where colors are mixed with whites, delicates mixed with towels, and ‘dry clean only’ garments are thrown into the washer/dryer. Life is just too short for that sort of chaos, so it’s better if I just do all the laundry myself.
@OP: Honestly you did the best thing. You needed to rinse out that residual soap by running a non-soap load and you did.
Those nagna sadhava have the right idea. No clothes, no laundry problems.
I noticed the “soap residue” issue with my previous front-loader. I once ran a load a second time for some reason that I can’t remember, without adding any detergent, and I was amazed at the amount of suds that it produced!
Anyway, that front-loader broke down after only about five years (thanks, LG!) and I now have a Maytag high-efficiency top loader in which I usually use less than the recommended amount of HE detergent and have the extra rinse cycle always on. Works great. I might try cutting back on detergent even more, except for very soiled items.
Then there is sorting, folding, and putting clothes away which my wife does because she says “I’m the only one who does it the way I want it”.
Ever since the front loading washing machine started to turn all my husband’s white undershirts to a pale grey/blue color, I’ve given up sorting whites from lights. But I still separate lights from darks.
If I had to do a load without soap, I’d just put it on the hottest setting and call it a day.
The bit I don’t get is the “wash with like colors” instruction on many clothes. So what do I do if I only have one bright red shirt? And how to launder things like plaids where there are multiple colors?
And I’ve been doing my own laundry for several decades (since college) and have really never had colors bleed. I think modern dyes are just better set.
If it’s that problematic and/or you only have one of them, I assume you have to wash it by hand using an appropriately delicate textile shampoo.
Some dyes bleed, though, so how will you know for sure without testing first?
I use bleach on most whites. We have a slight pink tinge in our well water due to red clay dirt in these here parts. I don’t bleach my dainties. So they are all a nice pink shade. Quite fetching. I tentatively named the color ‘Arky blush’. I may patent it.
when I stay on an island with no showers, where it’s illegal to use soap in the lake, I forgo soap for the week, except for washing my hands. I swim nice every morning (and some evenings) to rinse most of the dirt and sweat off. Yeah, soap works better, but just water does a decent job.
And I’ve absolutely run out of toothpaste and brushed my teeth anyway. There’s some residual toothpaste on the brush. It does a pretty decent job.
What madness is that? How many towels does she own?! I wash my towel every week or three. Sometimes I just wash the washcloth, because it seems to get dirty, and it’s small enough that it never pushes me to another load or makes the drier take forever, like towels do.
I’ve interchanged shampoo, dish soap, bar soap, and liquid castile soap for washing my body, hand-washing my clothes, hand-washing dishes, washing my hair, and washing stuff like hair brushes. But I’ve never used anything but laundry soap in the clothes washer, or dishwasher soap in the dishwasher. I feel like they are fussy.
Well, you could copy my old wardrobe - all black! Running dye was never a problem! 
I wash the stuff I want to wash in hot water in one load, along with enough other sturdy lights to fill the tub. (underpants, socks, sheets are the things I want to wash in hot.)
I use hot partly because I think stuff gets cleaner in general, and partly because my water is a little hard, and hot water does a much better job of dissolving the soap. I rinse that load twice on warm.
Everything else I throw together and wash in warm. EXCEPT, if I have a new garment that I think might bleed, especially a cheaper red item, I wash it alone the first time. (or maybe throw in a pair of white panties to see if it did bleed.)