I usually make 3 piles of laundry to wash according to color and not fabric: black clothes go in one pile, every other clothe I own goes into a second pile (colors white to navy blue). The third pile is for my bed linens and towels, (100% cotton, so I can wash them to 140°F)

Now, I don’t know if I should make more piles instead, because my bed linens and clothes sometimes combine several colors and I don’t know if they bleed and I’m slowly degrading them:

I was thinking of making a pile for black clothes, one for white clothes, one for every other color clothe I own (I have purple, yellow and green stuff plus denims), one for my bed linens (all of them are mixed colors, including dark and clear colors like red, orange, green and black in one piece) and another pile for my towels (one color only, but different ones, including green, purple, white, yellow and navy blue).

Regarding fabrics, I have 100% cotton, 100% merino wool, 100% polyester and mixed fabrics, so the number of piles can grow considerably.

I live alone, so sometimes I can need a lot of time to get a laundry worth pile of stuff to wash if I create as many piles as I suggested here.

I may be overthinking it but I’d like to do the laundry the right way and keep the stuff I already have in good condition. How do you do it?

  • RobotToaster
    1·
    4 days ago

    I’m a little obsessive about this myself.

    Usually I have

    • Dark colours, woolens, and delicates
    • Stuff I think could run (raw denim, etc)
    • Whites
    • Light colours and stuff I don’t care about fading, which can be washed either way.

    While most non-colour detergents don’t contain bleach any more, they contain optical brighteners that absorb UV and emit white light, to make whites look “whiter than white”. This can make dark colours, and especially blacks, look dull grey. Other than that you don’t usually have to worry about most colours, especially after the first wash. There are exceptions to this, such as raw denim which runs like crazy. You can also get “colour catcher” sheets for peace of mind that stop runs.

    Usually I use a non-biological delicates wool detergent for dark colours, woolens, and delicates, which I wash together, on a wool cycle. It doesn’t hurt to wash something more delicately than it’s supposed to be washed, and it means I don’t need to do as many loads. Sometimes I’ll throw light colours in with this if I have room. Anything “runny” I’ll wash with like colours, at least for the first few washes.

    Whites, light colours, and stuff I don’t care about looking dull like towels gets the cheapest own brand biological detergent.

    If you have dark coloured bedding you may want to get biological colour detergent, I don’t.