Are You Doing Your Laundry Right?
You may have a few tips and tricks when doing your laundry that have helped you out over the years. These tips and tricks can help give you a peace of mind knowing that you are doing things correctly and treating your clothing with the utmost care. There are, however, a number of urban legends that have weaseled their way into the practice of laundry that are often counterproductive to these objectives. These ‘peace of mind’ tricks could potentially be wasting resources. Or at the very worst, causing damage to your clothing. Below is a list of myths in the world of laundry, as well as some advice for what you either should or shouldn’t be doing with your clothes.
Use Less Detergent Than You Might Think
More detergent gets your clothes cleaner. This common misunderstanding of detergent use unfortunately makes a lot of sense, detergent is what gets your clothes clean. So, more means that they will be cleaner, right? In this case, more means your machine requires more rinsing to get the detergent out of the clothing. Laundry detergent takes a lot of water to get out of fabric, so your ability to get it out can drop by using additional detergent.
Use Different Temperatures of Water for Different Stains
The hotter the water, the cleaner your clothes will be. It is true that hot water works better at getting certain kinds of stains out of your clothing. However, that is not true of all types of stains. Certain kinds of stains can actually be made worse, and even permanent if you use hot water on them. Blood is a common example of this. When blood gets on your clothing the protein strands break apart and start to bind to the fabric. Cold water helps them stay together and not let the stain ‘set’. Hot water will make the blood break down faster and potentially cause a permanent stain. This is usually true of food stains as well (protein-based stains). If you spill food on your clothes, it is best to be safe and get it to cold water. A side note on blood, you can use hydrogen peroxide on blood because it destroys certain enzymes in the blood leaving less blood to stain.
Salt Doesn’t Make Colors Last Longer
Soaking your clothing in salt makes the colors last longer. This myth has been around for a long time, unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any truer. The belief is that salt causes most textile coloring to set into the fabric so that it wont bleed. Experts from Home Appliances & Cleaning Products Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute found that salt does not help the retention of dye to any measurable degree. Colors are set into the fabric at the factory. If you have clothing that bleeds after more than two washes then you should take them back because they were not set properly, or the coloring used on it is cheap. Jeans often bleed for a few washes, so if you have a problem with jeans, just know that is normal.
You Don’t Need to Wash Your Clothes After Every Wear
Wash clothes after every wear. This one will likely be controversial, and its no wonder, merely because it calls into question your standard for cleanliness. I should add that this does not apply to underwear. To hear this out, consider the amount of oil and sweat coming off your body just depending on the season. During summer months you can put the same wear and tear on a shirt by noon as opposed to wearing a shirt all day during the winter months. If you always wash clothes after one wear, that means subjecting them another round of treatment by detergent, friction, and hot air (if you use a dryer), which could very well be unnecessary. Consider giving your clothing two wears if you think they are still as clean as when you put them on. This helps save on water and detergent, and helps your clothing last longer.
Hopefully these tips will help you avoid some destructive mistakes in the future. If you are the type of person that doesn’t enjoy taking the risks and time for laundry, you may consider using our laundry delivery service. Here at Fresh Clothes, we ensure that we treat your clothing with the utmost care. We pride ourselves in ensuring that we are doing the absolute best for the customer and giving them a quality service that misses no details. Fresh Clothes is located in Boise Idaho and services customers by providing a top tier laundry service available by pickup and delivery. Our service is easy to sign up for, you simply go onto our website, click sign up, and put in your information. More information is available on the website regarding how the service works. Hopefully you found something in this post that will benefit you in the future.
