Title says it all. If it doesn’t damage normal clothes or delicate ones, why not just always use it? Is there any tradeoff with normal mode?
Er… “WHY not”
Fixed typo in title.
I believe delicate mode means the drum goes slower, which means less water is knocked out, and so it takes longer. This is similar with using lower heat settings.
No reason not to. It’s easier on the clothes too which is why its for delicates.
The big drawback: It takes longer about twice as long on my machine, If you’re doing a lot of laundry, you can end up with piles of wet clothes waiting for their turn in the dryer. And, if the wet clothes wait around long enough, they’ll get mildewy.
I always use delicate, and it does not seem to affect the drying time on my dryer (maybe this means that delicate is broken on my dryer?). I use it for the reasoning that delicate must be gentler on the clothes.
On a related subject, I have always wondered why I throw the dryer sheet in…because I can’t really tell that it did anything special to the clothes. Do others swear that these sheets work? They must, or they would not sell so many of them…I just cannot tell the different.
IOW, you’ll never get your jeans dry just using the dryer. So if one or more people in your household wear jeans every day, or nearly every day, you’re gonna need to line dry some of them, because they aren’t going to get dry in the delicate cycle.
It takes longer, and in any cases it doesn’t get hot enough to get the wrinkles out. We who do not iron need steamy heat to release those wrinkles.
So don’t use them. I never do.
When heated, those dryer sheets release a substance which causes static electricity to drain from clothes instead of building up on them. I never have problems with static electricity in my laundry, so it’d be a waste of money for me to buy them. I suspect this may be because my roommate uses them and they may leave a deposit on the inside of the dryer which my clothes get a benefit from. I have no way of testing this except to persuade him to not use them, but I doubt he could be so persuaded. I’ll try though.
Try drying your clothes without them a couple times and see if they have excessive static cling. If not, stop using them altogether.
Note that just because they sell lots of some kind of product doesn’t mean you have to use them. There’s lots of such products that I never use. Fabric softener, bleach, and hair conditioner are some that come to mind immediately. I could name many more if you want.
The Master speaks. dtilque is right — they essentially release a small amount of wax onto your clothes, which reduces friction as the clothes tumble. In my experience, you only really get bad static cling when washing wool or polyester. I never use them, since most of my clothes are cotton.
I can tell immediately upon pulling the clothes out of the dryer if I forgot to put a dryer sheet in; in my experience it makes a big difference.
Most (all?) of my clothes are cotton, I think.
The drum moves at the same speed it is just the temperature that is the difference. So it is going to take forever for your clothes to dry. That cycle is meant for clothes that you think are going to shrink not for jeans. If you were to put jeans on the delicate cycle they would be in there for hours.
quite a bit ago my dryer broke, the temp. will not go above “air fluff”. it takes about 6-9 hours for a dryer load to dry in that temp. it is a bit silly to run the dryer that long.
I always use the delicate/low heat setting on my dryer, except when drying towels. If the dryer is not overloaded, it only takes one cycle to dry things, but a fair amount of my clothes are synthetics that don’t hold moisture. Jeans take two cycles, though. Nothings shrinks and I’m pretty sure my clothing looks a lot better for longer.
Also, I don’t use liquid fabric softeners or dryer sheets as I’m sensitive to scents and they make my clothes hold sweat and dust more readily. Could that be why other people’s clothes don’t dry as fast on low settings? I hate goop in my clothes.