Moderator
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 2,509
Thanked:
312 Times
Liked:
633 Times
|
Laundry is undoubtedly one of my favourite topics (ask lawleypop)
I haven't been in any campus laundry rooms so I'm going to outline a more general guide that you can customize if you so wish.
Laundry Detergent:
You'll want something that smells good, gets out tough stains and that you won't need too much of, for starters. I imagine laundry rooms may have those "insert a coin for a detergent sachet" machines, but I'd advise against it. When you get on campus, go to a grocery store and pick up your favourite laundry detergent, concentrated. The great thing about laundry detergent is that you don't need a lot to have great smelling, clean clothes and you can make it last for longer.
One of the first things you DON'T want to do is mix laundry detergents. They won't necessarily mean a cleaner result and mixing chemicals is usually not advisable unless you're in a lab in ABB. I recommend Tide or Purex. I think Tide is a pretty solid bet because it's just been around for so long and they're just damn good at what they do IMO. If you prefer a "greener" alternative, then go for it. I hear Arm and Hammer is also a great brand but I haven't tried it myself.
Liquids vs. Powders
Go with the liquid, any day. As you'll learn in first year Chemical Kinetics, a liquid means more molecules farther apart and more easily accessible for a reaction - they just tend to "work" better because they're well distributed and can get at the molecules in stains more easily to react with. Solids are slightly different. For one thing, most powders require water to start working but depending on how you pour in the powder, water might not always be able to get at the powder molecules, leaving you with weird clumps in your wash. Diluting a detergent powder is a better bet but they're not very miscible with water all the time when you self dilute. It requires a decent amount of practice unless you just "know" to ensure they're actually dissolving instead of just lying at the bottom, making your mixture appear cloudy. Liquids can be tough to dilute but stirring them helps.
How much:
For larger loads, or loads that are heavily soiled, you might want a 70/30 detergent/water mix. For a lighter load, go with 50/50 or even 40/60. Soap suds up, which is precisely why you don't need an immense amount for clothes that aren't soiled or stained. When you have clothes that are actually dirty, not just worn a few times, a better alternative to a large amount of detergent may simply be choosing where to put your detergent.
How to Dilute Your Liquids:
Add small amounts of water and keep mixing. The keep is to mix as much as possible and you do this by gradually adding water. If you start getting bubbles, you're good to go, but make sure your mixture isn't completely bubbly - you want the detergent to mostly react IN the wash not before.
Stain Treatment & Bleach:
If you have white clothes, the natural tendency is to bleach and I'll be the first to say, bleach works wonders. It's great for getting that "just purchased" store white and making you gleam from head to toe; it gets out tough stains like ink, blood, and even coloured "leaks" from other clothes.
But I wouldn't recommend it.
For one thing, bleach is pretty harsh and it's quite toxic. To get a really clean effect, you don't just need a good amount of bleach, you need a nice amount of water (and you don't add water to bleach, you add bleach to water) and ideally, you want this water to be pretty hot. (I don't know the Chemistry behind this part; it appears to be a family thing). For optimum results you want to soak your clothes in a tub with this mixture for a few hours, if not a day or two, and the toxic bleach fumes are not something you want to be around. They will make you dizzy, wheeze, cough and itch, and adding more laundry detergent is miles more advisable.
On delicate clothes, bleach make wreak havoc and it should only be used as a last resort or on something super precious, or when nothing else works.
That being said, let's move on to a better method of stain treatment.
Presoak, pretreat, let sit and then wash.
Unless your clothes shrink terribly or cannot be exposed to hot water, when you have a stain you want to get out, soak the fabric, especially the stained area in hot water first. Then apply your liquid detergent (preferably slightly diluted) onto the stain and rub it in. Immerse it in water (preferably hot) and it doesn't hurt to get a few bubbles going by adding some more detergent into the container and adding some more water to get things foaming up. Let this sit for a while. Then run the article of clothing through a wash, preferably warm or hot. Cold water should do the trick most times, especially if you have a cold water detergent, but for really tough stains, hot water works better sometimes.
You don't need a lot of detergent or harsh chemicals to get out stains if you're a bit committed. A bit of rubbing goes a long way. (I know, TWSS)
What to Wash Together
In a perfect world, everybody would get along, but your clothes don't work that way.
You need to sort your clothes before you throw them into the wash unless you don't mind a bunch of pink shirts or what happens to the fabrics.
A good rule is to separate cottons from more delicate fabrics like silk and satin. Cottons tend to survive harsher washes just fine (though they may shrink) but they're less adept at surviving a hot dryer IMExperience (they appear to be susceptible to wearing down more easily though it could be the tumbling that does it).
For your delicates (which includes underwear or anything fragile), cold washes and air drying them should be fine. This may appear to be a bit of a pain but you don't want that nice silk scarf to shrink or shred, and shrunken underwear is probably not the best thing to spend WW in. You'll also want to put these in a slow wash whereas cottons are usually fine in a fast wash.
What about colours?
A good rule of thumb is to separate anything vivid or in the rainbow, from your whites. This includes black clothes which may have blue undertones that can leak, or worse, black undertones that can leak. As Jeremy suggested, turning things inside out is helpful but strong colours may leak through anyway. Turning things inside out is primarily helpful for when you have graphics or delicate material on your shirts that might be ruined by excessive exposure to water or friction.
You also want to be careful when you dry these. Let's say your clothes don't dry and you assume they have, and check back 40 minutes after they were supposed to be done. In that time, the clothes may leak colour onto each other and you don't want that happening.
I can cover spin cycles, etc if desired
__________________
Emma Ali
Honours Life Sciences
|