How to Sort Your Laundry Before Washing

How to Sort Your Laundry Before Washing

Did your favorite shirt or pants end up dull and lose all their brightness after a wash? or did what was once a white shirt end up changing to pink? Did you put your favorite wool pullover in the washing machine, and took it out to find it stretched out or shrunken?

You find yourself wondering, “why is this happening to me?”, even though you made sure to pick the best washing machine out there, one with all premium features and technologies a washer could offer. Well, doing laundry isn’t about stuffing the washer with all your dirty clothes together, adding detergent, and pushing the start button.

You need to sort your laundry the right way to maintain the quality of your clothes. I know you might be in a rush, so you just put everything together, but this will do you no good; you’ll end up regretting ruining that cozy hoodie.

The process isn’t as hard as you think. You just have to follow some simple steps, stick to them, and make this routine a habit.

Sort Your Clothes as You Take them Off

The reason you feel sorting laundry is the hardest part of this chore is that you pile your clothes throughout the week and end up with a mountain of clothes waiting to be sorted.

To make things easier, try to sort clothes as you take them off. Use separate laundry baskets for each category, e.g., a basket for white pieces, and place them in the laundry room. Put labels on the baskets to tell everyone in the house where to put their clothes.

Don’t Ignore the Label

Each piece of clothing has a label with washing instructions. It tells you information like water temperature, whether you can put that piece in the dryer or not, whether can you actually use the washing machine, or should it be hand-washed or dry cleaned.

Sort the pieces that are hand-washed and dry-cleaned into different piles, despite their color. With time you’ll be more experienced, and you’ll be able to differentiate between different fabrics without looking at the label.

Sort According to Color

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Now that you put hand-washed and dry-cleaned items in separate baskets, you can move on to sorting clothes based on color. Divide your laundry into whites, light colors, and dark colors, and place them in separate piles.

The light colors pile should include pinks, lavenders, light blues, light greens, and yellows. Dark-colored clothes include blacks, dark greys,brown, and navy.

When sorting your laundry, don’t forget to check the pockets to see if you forget anything that may stain your clothes when placing the laundry in the washer.

Separate Clothes with Solid Stains

If you have some heavily stained pieces, separate those from other piles. Don’t put clothes with oil stains or ground-in dirt with other items. Clothes with solid stains won’t be clean, and the stains and oil odor may transfer to other pieces causing them to be dirtier.

Use Laundry Bags

Do you complain about losing socks or about the washing machine ruining your delicate pieces? Laundry bags will fix that. Group your socks and delicate pieces in laundry bags to protect them and prevent them from being lost or mismatched with other socks.