A thing that perplexes me about Mike

[jedusor]

If other people do it his way too, I guess I won't pick on him about it.

[Poll #1591831]

Comments

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am closer to "No sorting" , but I tend to not put my socks and my undies or towels in the same load.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

For the reason vvvexation gave below--so they don't get tangled and not properly washed?

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

No, mostly a mild neurosis that somehow stuff my girl bits have slimed are okay to wash with towels, but stuff that my feet have been encased in should not be washed with anything intimate or sanitary like towels, undies, and sheets. This is not OCD in that I can't wash them together ever, just how I tend to split loads.

4 categories

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Colored normal (wash in cold), white normal (wash in warm), delicates (wash on gentle cycle), dry clean (take to cleaners).

Re: 4 categories

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

So far, you win the Most Anal Award. ;)

Re: 4 categories

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how I do it, too, except I bump up the temperatures by one notch. (Why bother saving energy? There's so much oil we're just throwing it at pelicans!)

Or rather, there's the "take to cleaner's" category, which includes both dry-cleanables and things I don't want to be bothered with ironing (pretty much, just dress shirts); and there's also the fine-washables-I-can-wash-at-home category, but for me that's small enough that I do it case-by-case (usually this is hand-wash in the bathroom sink).

And sports clothing that I've written on with puff paint (thanks to TNT, that's a category with a half-dozen or more items) is "wash in warm, hang dry".

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Everything is washed in cold, but still sorted by color -- mostly segregating might-bleed darks (blacks and reds, shocking, I know) from everything else.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Clothes I don't bother to sort at all, but they're mostly dark colors anyway. I do wash sheets and towels separately, so that smaller items don't get tangled up in them and fail to get clean or dry.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just remembered a system I worked out a while ago that I just haven't been using lately: Types of garment that I have fewer of get sorted into a separate hamper so that I can bump them up in the what-to-wash-next queue. (Otherwise the queue is strictly FIFO.)

This method only applies when I have laundry facilities convenient to hand, but not too convenient -- like, in the building but not in-unit. When I have a washer and dryer in-unit, I do laundry as soon as I've got one or two loads built up; when I have to use a laundromat, I wait as long as I possibly can and haul a bunch of loads there at once; either way, I'm washing everything there is to wash, so there's no need to prioritize the rarer items. But in the in-between case, I tend to put off doing laundry until I've got several loads' worth and then only have time to wash one or two of them, so it helps to prioritize.

[rebbyribs.livejournal.com]

I sort clothing and bedding into loads based on colors. Diapers get washed separately from clothing, and they are not sorted by color.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

Mostly by color, but sometimes by cloth (jeans together, towels together).

I'll put blacks and colors together sometimes (our clothes are generally pretty old and not likely to run), and sometimes some greys in with the whites to make a full load.

[macey-muse.livejournal.com]

I'm currently with the parents, which means communal washing done on a rota, with whites + sheets & towels that're pale, dark colours, and mid-range colours as the three categories. But because the person putting the wash on won't be the person transferring them to the drier the next day, and probably won't be the person who /owns/ the clothes, we have a system of post-it notes if there's anything that needs to stay out of the tumble drier.

At uni, I split my loads into whites + lights + linens, and darks (including jeans and anything mid-coloured that might run), and we've no tumble-drier so it all just hangs anyways.

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

Lights, darks, pants, towels/sheets, baby clothes.

When I lived alone, I sometimes sorted into lights, reds, blues, pants.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

By color (white, blue/green, red/pink/purple, black) except for towels, sheets, tablecloths (each in its own load, by color).

[gerald_duck]

I ticked "no sorting", but it's worth noting all my everyday clothing is black cotton. I could sort by type of garment, but why would I?

[mh75.livejournal.com]

so, i have a family. we sort a LOT:

colors/whites/diapers
with special pullouts for
gentle cycle/heavy soil/dry cleaning

I keep meaning to make a basket for 'mending needed', too.

Also, noting that i take note when i put laundry in to pull out some things that can't be dried.

[imagines.livejournal.com]

reposting in the right spot:

I don't sort at all unless I have something bleed-prone--which is rare, since most of my clothes come from thrift stores and thus are long past any chance of bleeding. (I don't buy clothes that require dry-cleaning or other special handling, because I just don't wanna do it.)

This is mainly because I own about two white pieces of clothing, so why sort?

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

A combination of "anything that will fit" and "delicate items separate" (where "delicates" includes binder, embroidered things, etc).

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

... except that things I REALLY CARE about staying white don't go with new dark-coloured things (because I don't know how much the dye will bleed); and my precious precious dinner suit (and expensive formal shirts) get dry-cleaned (... when I've found a dry-cleaner I trust with them!).

[elgecko.livejournal.com]

Lately, we sort them into large bags and a laundry man takes them away and brings them back some time later. It bears noting that this resembles how I did it as a kid, given I have a Latin mother.

[crazybutsound]

I sort by colors only if they're outer garments, as in colors bledding into them can be seen by everybody. If I only have white undies to wash with a load of red t-shirts, then I don't care, even if my undies come out pink, lol. I do tend to also wash sheets and towels on their own, but mostly because those I lend to a lot of different people so washing them apart from the clothes means being able to wash them on super hot, lol.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Everything can go in on warm, but some things (socks, underwear, dishcloths, towels, sheets) can and should go on hot at least sometimes. However, I don't like to put dishtowels and socks in the same load, so the dishtowels wind up being washed warm with shirts and pants more often than hot.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

So how does Mike do it?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

By garment type. It makes no sense to me, and according to the poll, pretty much nobody else does it that way.

[jillcook.livejournal.com]

When I had a child in diapers, I did all diapers on the "sanitize" setting of my washing machine and air dried. My current washing method is this: into their own hampers go towels; female undergarments and other delicate/strappy things like bathing suits; linen including cloth napkins, dish towels, pillowcases and sheets, handtowels. tablecloths; denim and other heavy/dark fabrics like fleece; t-shirts and other lightweight fabric; white socks, white male undershirts, and other white or very light things. I also have a basket for pink, red and purple clothing...with three daughters this one generally fills pretty quickly. Then in our master closet there is a laundry bag for dry cleaning, since my husband wears suit pants and shirt and tie at least twice a week. It sounds like a lot of work but it isn't. I generally do each of these loads once a week, so I end up washing about one load a day. We use many more towels in the summertime so when swim season is over the towels will go back in with the other linen, but for now it's easier to keep them separate. It helps to have a well thought out laundry room on the second floor of our house where our bedrooms are, so most of the laundry never has to go up and down a set of stairs.

[ertchin.livejournal.com]

My default is "no sorting", but I do make a couple of exceptions for things like colors, where to not make the exception would be Bad.