Washing Machines: Hot, Warm or Cold Water: Does It Make a Difference?

In My Humble Opinion
23

I had a washing machine that the best it could do was warm, but possibly it was a terrible washing machine in other ways, too. Things did not get really clean.

Now I have a much better machine, and I really think washing kitchen towels in hot water has kept them cleaner. I wash everything as hot as the fabric will take it, and now I have a machine that will actually do hot. Things are much cleaner! But it’s probably the machine more than the water temp.

By the way, for white socks I have heard that boiling them with sliced lemons is good for renewing the white. Me, I would just buy new socks and throw the old gray ones away. I would think boiling them would ruin the elastic faster than putting them in the dryer.

My machine even has a “hand wash” cycle, which is a little bit of an oxymoron. Virtually everything I wash in the hand wash cycle is washed cold. But that’s not the stuff that gets really dirty in the first place.

24

Yes, it makes a difference - warm is best for home-made powder laundry soap.

For store-bought liquid or powder detergents, probably doesn’t matter as much.

Always best to pre-treat potential stains. And for the rinse, use vinegar to remove residue. (Your clothes won’t smell like vinegar.)

25

This. I do my underwear and sheets in hot water, and throw in enough other laundry that won’t be harmed by hot water to make it a decent sized load. (Not an issue when I wash the sheets, but i don’t do those every week.) Everything else gets warm.

My water is hard enough that if I wash in cold there will be some detergent residue, and I’ll itch. Ymmv.

26

My wife always used “tap cold” and pods, and nary a problem.

But yes, detergents do dissolve better in hotter water.

I only separate if there is something red or similar mixed in with whites. Blacks go fine with whites.

27

New reds need to be washed separately. I haven’t had trouble with any other colored clothing (or with any older clothing) in decades.

28

Do they? I haven’t had any problem with red in ages except once, but that was color transfer to a beige wall not laundry. For a while, my company was wearing red shirts (still use them for temps) as part of the uniform. They specifically ordered color-stable shirts that were gauranteed to not transfer through contact (rubbing) and I never once had a problem with the red running in the wash from those shirts either. I wonder if it was a combination of dye and synthetic material in the blend.

29

Well, like you said “specifically ordered color-stable shirts”, not all reds are that way. I have ended up with too many pink undershirts that way.

30

I use hot/cold for my white undershirts and socks, and warm/cold for everything else. Liquid detergent, bleach pods for the whites, Clorox 2 for the rest, and Downey for both.

Seems to work fine for me.

Occasionally I’ll leave the bleach out for my whites and run some liquid bluing instead.