I admit that i don’t get around in $200+ pairs of designer jeans, so maybe this is a case of different strategies for different brands, but i’ve been putting my jeans in the dryer for years and never had a pair shrink to any noticeable degree. Garden-variety Levis certainly handle the dryer without a problem.
Goodness what a lot of work!
I wonder if its a difference in the jeans we buy. Mine are usually pre-faded/distressed (even the dark wash ones, are not completely dark indigo, they are flecked from prewashing & distressing) and I have never known then to affect laundry in any negative way when washed warm with other cottons.
The one time I have had color run to other clothes, I was in Bulgaria and by lack of language skills+mathemathical error in converting Centigrade to Fahrenheit, accidentally washed them on “temperature of the sun” setting (50 C! American washers don’t even go that hot). In that case, some peach colored undies got greyed out. Nothing else was visibly affected (BUT the laundry in question was EXTREMELY dirty so maybe I was just happy to see it come clean).
At any rate, I’m sure you’re correct about your own experience, and I’m sure I’m correct about mine. so… you know… shrug.
In the deep south, you aint air drying nutin. Except maybe mold.
And the Old Navy jeans we wear seem to shrink every time you wash them, unless you wash in cold and air dry.
Its not the warm air and water. Its the jelly doughnuts.
I wash everything together cold and dry it all together on low. I’ve never had any problems. The only stuff I have that would have problems is dry clean only and never goes in the washer.
What’s wrong with using a dryer sheet? Is it the smell? I only use unscented.
We have a front loader. There is the white load, the dark loads, and towels. Don’t like that? DO IT YOURSELF!
Mrs. Vorlon seems to be of the mindset that laundry has to be done one load at a time. I tend to get my undies in a knot when I reach in the draw to discover none remaining—please note I have 14 pair. That means nothing has been done for two weeks. That’s the point she is demoted to folding.
Unless you happen to be my wife, I doubt it will ever come about that I’ll be doing much of anything with your jeans. 
I use the Shout dye catcher sheets, they work great, so I don’t worry about mixing. But towels throw lint on dark tshirts. And I never use dryer sheets with towels, we have uber-hard water, so I use vinegar in the rinse for them. And IMHO the point of the dryer and the cool down cycle is for perma-press, but if you leave everything lay in there for 8 hours, you’re gonna have wrinkles, and since I iron my work clothes, no thanks! In any case, yes, I suspect a separate landry basket for my things is next. I don’t want to discourage help, just bad help!
Dryer sheets leave a fine slicone or wax film on the clothes. This clogs up the lint screen in the dryer, and makes towels noticeably less absorbent, and can aggravate allergies and asthma. I’ve heard some people say that the sheets leave spots on laundry, too, but my husband’s clothes never have spots from them.
As long as you’re willing to clean the dryer and especially the lint screen, and forgo dryer sheets on towels, and don’t have anyone with asthma or allergies in the house, then using dryer sheets is OK.
I am having some difficulty with the idea that dry clean only items are getting put in the general hamper. It’s like folks are planning ahead to be angry.
The system in our household is pretty simple: There is a bag hanging on the closet wall where dry clean items go. Everything else gets put in the hamper. When I do laundry I separate light, dark and crap with red and wash them accordingly. Simple. Easy. No one needs to get butthurt.
I see now that I haven’t been doing laundry properly my whole life. I’m pretty much a “dump it in, turn it on” kind of gal. I have mostly dark clothing, so I never ran into a dye problem. But last weekend, I absentmindedly threw in a wool hat into the dryer, and now it’s all lumpy. And it shrunk. So in all the years I’ve been doing laundry improperly, it was the first time I actually lost an item in the process. Pretty good for 10 years of laundry-doing!
I don’t see the big deal about it. On the SDMB, people seem to have huge towel hang ups (don’t put them into the hamper wet! don’t dry them with anything else) but I do all of the above with no ill effects on a weekly basis. I don’t really see the problem.
Since I do my own laundry, I have no one to blame for myself. Like last week, when I tossed a bunch of T-shirts and jeans in the washer on warm and the dryer on, I dunno, “toasty.”
I used to have a pair of brown tights. Now I have a tiny, tiny pair of brown tights suitable for dressing dolls, maybe.
I live alone and have to use pay for use washers and dryers. My towels, jeans, and underwear all get washed together; sheets and white stuff get washed separately. Drying is done with the same mix. Is this why I’m single and women hate me?
No laundry for you!
No, sweetie. We’d only hate you if you did *our *laundry that way. You can do your laundry however you like. We reserve the right to snigger slightly, and possibly make rollyeyes when with our friends on hen night.
Dad once washed a beloved sweater of mine. Angora wool. On high. Oops. Post-wash, it would have fit a Barbie if she’d had breast reduction, and you would have had to take her head off in order to put it on. And no, it was not in the hamper: it had been put aside, because I was going to hand-wash it.
But I wasn’t mad, because I knew that he’d been trying to help and that the instructions he’d gotten re. washing so far had been “lights go on high.” Not his fault that Mom hadn’t trained him better. I explained that “lights go on high” was for cotton lights only - what Mom called the “lights” basket was actually the “cotton lights”. How are those men that so many of you think “should know better” trained? Did you explain what they should had done, or did you just get mad? “How can you be so stupid” doesn’t do much to raise people’s HQ (Housebroken Quotient).
That sweater didn’t have labels, being hand-knit, but anyway many labels end up getting cut or fading: you’d need to be psychic in order to read them.
I definitely did notice the difference when I was doing my own laundry at college, as I couldn’t afford multiple cycles. All my clothes for that week went in. I had no idea I wasn’t looking that good until someone jokingly assumed I wasn’t the type of person who cared about how my clothes looked.
Now that I’m back home, I can do proper laundry. Still, I prefer to let my jeans draw up. They always stretch out as I wear them. I don’t think they can shrink below a certain level.
Nothing wrong with a little specialization.
I haven’t operated a washing machine in over 20 years, ever since I mixed something of hers in the wash in some way that is wrong in a way I still don’t understand. I don’t fold clothes because I don’t do a proper one third folding method (whatever that is) so everything I do has to be redone.
On the other hand, she has no reason to ever use my tools. I still have to look at the time she “helped” me tile the bathroom. Her idea of yard work tends to kill the grass unless I come behind her.