My apartment unit had new washing machines installed. The instructions inside the (top loading) lid say, rather emphatically, that detergent must (“Must”) be put in first, and not poured over the clothes.
Okay… why? Who cares? What’s the bloomin’ difference? I’d been doing it the other way for all these years, figuring the direct contact of the liquid detergent on the clothes (yeah, for all of thirty seconds!) might focus the cleaning power. Well, fine, that’s obviously silly. But what are they on about?
My guess is that because the detergent my not rinse away as well? That’s no big deal if you’re the only one using it but others my have an allergy to certain detergents.
I think that is only relevant for powder detergent. When I used to do it wrong, I would get not-quite dissolved remnants of detergent mixed in my clothes after the wash. Putting the detergent in the bottom seemed to make it dissolve better.
With liquid detergent, it does seem to matter a whit.
If you pour the detergent directly on the clothing, it may not rinse out completely and will fluoresce. I put on a pair of tan shorts on day, they looked just fine. When I walked outside, there was a bright blue spot the size of my hand on one leg. Went back inside, it was gone.
From what I hear, you can see the results of that even better in blacklight.
Also they don’t want the powder making a mess up the top of the bowl (top loader) or falling out the door ( front loader).
For the toploader, the items in the machine may “whip” as the agitator yanks them around, and the powder could be thrown around by that whipping action.
The washers in my building are definitely new and not high efficiency, whatever that is, but I have the same instructions; they even say that poring detergent over the clothes can ruin them. This goes completely against all the training I have had washing clothes in the 70+ years that I have been doing it, so I ignore it. Haven’t had any problems.
This is the right answer. Newer front loaders use a lot less water than before and rely more on agitation to distribute the detergent. If you put the liquid on top of the clothes, it will tend to just stick to the clothes instead of dissolving in the water.
Well I learned a lesson with this Maytag HE top loader. First time I needed to bleach some poopy clothes. As usual I stopped the cycle after a few minutes of washing. Plan was to let it soak 20 minutes. Then restart. Well Maytag had other ideas. After 12 minutes with the lid up it started alarming. Then started draining my precious wash water. Sigh… Luckily I was standing right there and quickly closed the lid and hit restart. Lost about a quart of water at most.
Anyone tried canceling and restarting? My old washer you just spun the dial back to the beginning of the wash cycle. That way you got another full wash cycle after the bleach soak. What will happen if I hit cancel on the HE Maytag? Will it dump my water?
Thankfully mine has a Bulky setting that actually gives me a tub of water to bleach soak. Some brands don’t have that.
Eh. Not really. I just decreased the amount. Instead of a full cap, I would use 1/2 to 2/3 cap regular liquid laundry detergent. No problems with gerting clothes clean or rinsing the well.
Answered my own question. Yes canceling the wash cycle dumps the water. There’s really no way with my machine to restart the wash cycle from the beginning. The days of spinning the knob and restarting are over forever.
I’m learning. Bit by bit, I’ll figure this beast out.
Also, I tried soaking 10 minutes. Hit resume for a minute. Then pause. Hoping I could get my 20 bleach soak. nope. I went outside to roll the dumpster to the curb. Got back and the machine had dumped my water.
So, fortunately I have a very nice laundry tub in my utility room. I will revert back to my grandmother’s era and soak the clothes there. My uncle will not be wearing shit stained clothes. I love him too much to humiliate him that way. We can soak in the laundry tub as long as necessary and then transfer to the washing machine. It’s kind of pathetic but whatever it takes to get shit stains out we’ll do. We know from years of experience that a 20 minute soak gets the man’s clothes spotless. We rinse them out first anyhow in the laundry tub before putting them in the washer.
I set the load to "small,’ then put in the powder (1 Tbsp. + some baking soda. Someone once told me that a molecule of detergent can coat itself with many times its mass in particles, and more than a Tbsp. will stay in the fabric and collect more dirt) but no laundry. After it’s agitated and dissolved the powder for a minute, then I re-set to “large” and add the clothes.
I’ve always put soap powder into the washer first after waiting for it to fill up a little. Harder to do in commercial laundromats, have to close the lid or it won’t fill, but always dissolve soap powder first before putting in clothes.
I don’t use liquid detergent–why pay for water–but the last time I was in the supermarket, the powder detergent was down to a couple brands and the rest of the aisle was liquids. I was telling someone who works for P&G that one thing I found odd about liquid detergent (which I have used on occasion) is that the markings inside the cap were very difficult to read (esp if your laundry room is not well lit). I wondered aloud if that was deliberate in order to get people to use more detergent than necessary…
Based on notices found at some coin-ops, I assumed it was intended to reduce sudsing which in turn leads to clogging of drains and scum buildup in the machines. I don’t see why coin-ops would care if you had soap residue on your clothes.