How hot do you wash clothes?
I see a lot of people in here saying they only wash all their clothes cold. My normal temp for anything that can be washed in the machine is 30C, but il set it to 40-60C if things are looking particularly dirty.
I guess I’m a bit of a messy eater and I cycle a lot, so I often get oil or bike grease on my clothes. For white T shirts I sometimes even have to crank it to 90C to get them coming out looking properly clean.
How are you guys getting stains out on a cold wash so easily? Or are you just more careful not to spill shit on your clothes?
18 Replies
Cold always but most stains I have come out with a tide pen
So not quite the same level of dirtiniess
i cold wash / hang dry everything except towels
Careful eating, aprons for cooking, art media, beater clothes for yard work. Stains get a stain spray treatment or diy household stuff prior to washes. hot wash only for dirty clothes i don’t care about, bedding, gym clothes
for white tees maybe look into an oxy brightener?
also keep an apron for cooking greasy things (i’m a real messy cook)
Cold
As probably the person that treats their clothes the most like shit
I cold wash everything. I pre-treat stains (I'm a messy eater too), and I found that Dr. Bronner's castille soap seems to work well for that.
For grease stains, anyway.
Pre treating with neat dish washing liquid definitely seems to help with oil/grease for sure but sometimes if I’ve left the stain too long before washing it doesn’t work
yeah, treating it promptly is important.
do it as soon as you can. it's never been a problem for me if it sits in the laundry for a few days with soap on it.
Sometimes I will go out weekend partying, stain something on the Friday, stay at friends houses, not get back til Sunday when it’s too late. Doesn’t help that I always want to wear my coolest outfits on the weekend too
Guess I should invest in a tide pen
Yeah, a tide pen is handy, especially when traveling.
I love the incongruity of partying and crashing with friends...but gotta bring my Tide pen to keep my clothes looking good!
Cold wash, and I pretreat stains with whichever pretreatment is appropriate for the stain. Then hand dry or machine on low, depending on the item.
I only ever hang dry - barely anyone owns a dryer in the UK. I should also say that I’ve never had any issue with the longevity of my clothes, I just feel like I should probably not be washing hot all the time for environmental reasons.
Pre-treat grease stains with blue dawn dish soap and then wash cold. If that doesn’t get it out, you can try making a paste with baking soda and dawn soap but just the soap should work.
FWIW, water has to be > 60 deg C to kill bacteria. So I tend to use the hot setting a lot (especially for undergarments) unless I'm dealing with delicates. And for those, I try to air dry and have them get some sun - since UV is also a good way to kill microbes.
soap also kills bacteria, though.
It can do some of that, but sadly not nearly enough, and there's definitely a decent body of research that shows that low-temperature cycles don't kill off a lot of bacteria (and lanudry detergent actually has a lot of things that thing like E Coli like to eat). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26696989/
PubMed
Bacterial Exchange in Household Washing Machines - PubMed
Household washing machines (WMs) launder soiled clothes and textiles, but do not sterilize them. We investigated the microbial exchange occurring in five household WMs. Samples from a new cotton T-shirt were laundered together with a normal laundry load. Analyses were performed on the influent water …
MDPI
Potential for Microbial Cross Contamination of Laundry from Public ...
Although clothes washing machines remove dirt, microorganisms are not reliably removed by modern cold-water machine-washing practices. Microbial bioburden on clothing originates from the wearer’s skin, the environment (indoor and outdoor), and the washing machine itself. While most clothing microbes are commensals, microbes causing odors and opp...
"Although clothes washing machines remove dirt, microorganisms are not reliably removed by modern cold-water machine-washing practices. "