The word laundry conjures up thoughts of your room as a teenager. Clothes hanging from the ceiling fan, sweaty shirts piled in the corner, and thirteen unmatched socks. Back then laundry seemed like an impossible chore.
In reality, it’s so much easier than that. The most difficult part is doing it often enough to avoid a “Clothes Mountain”. Once you’ve hit mountain status it’s easy to feel sixteen again. Here are simple tips to keep you in adulthood and save you time.
Sort First
With Hero Clean’s Ultra Laundry Detergent you no longer have to wash your whites and colors separately, not that you were stressing about that anyway. It’s still smart to go through and separate nicer clothes that have different wash and dry requirements. If your wife or girlfriend trusts you with her clothes, you better make sure you’re washing them properly.
Tags
This is important. Reading directions is looked down upon in many cases, but clothing isn’t one of them. You might not agree, but that’s until you wash a shirt whose tag reads “Dry Clean Only” and you’ve wasted your money. Every tag should tell you how to wash that item, either with symbols, words, or both. A quick breakdown of the symbols:
The machine wash symbol looks like a trashcan with waves in it. If it has:
- One dot: wash cold.
- Two dots: wash warm.
- Three dots: wash hot.
- An X: go to the dry cleaners.
The tumble dry symbol is a square with a circle on the inside:
- White circle: any temperature.
- One dot: low temp.
- Two dots: normal temp.
- Three dots: high temp.
Now you’re educated on the mysterious glyphs you’ve never been able to decode. Once you have your piles sorted, your washer and dryer are clearly marked for you to choose “hot” or “cold” water or “high temp” and “low temp”.
It should go without saying, but before you put clothing in check every pocket. Cell phones, chap stick, and wallets don’t do so well in water or high heat. Be careful not to overload the machine either. About two thirds full is the most you want to do. Too large a load and your garment won’t be suitably washed.
Detergent
There are hundreds of detergents for you to choose from. Scented, unscented, with and without softener, for sensitive skin, and the list goes on. Hero Clean solves your problems with their Ultra Laundry Detergent.
Now that that’s settled, the only remaining question is how much of it to use per load. If you’re clothes have a white residue on them after washing you’ve either used too much or put too many clothes in. Using the lines on the inside of the cap is smart, but you also need to think about how large and how dirty your load is.
Drying
Dryer sheets are great for keeping clothes soft and eliminating static. If you hate static cling but aren’t that interested in lavender scented dryer sheets, there are alternatives in the form of tennis balls and aluminum foil. Crumple up the aluminum into a ball and toss it in. Replace every month. For tennis balls, throw in two or three and they can actually help speed up the drying process.
Stains
We’ve all experienced that sense of panic. You spill beer on your nice shirt on Friday night or bbq sauce on your pants at the tailgate. Your first thought might be to toss it in the trash. Not anymore. Soak it in cool water with one tablespoon of vinegar and half a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid for roughly thirty minutes. This trick gets out more than 90% of stains.
Know When To Fold Them
Mankind created machines to wash and dry our clothes and sheets for us. At the moment there isn’t a machine that can fold your clothes and put them away. In the meantime just make sure you don’t let anything sit in the dryer too long. That’s when wrinkles set in.