laundrule

You put them all in because you think it will be fine, I put them all in because I don't care. We are not the same.

Said like a man who didn't have to go to high school gym class with pink Fruit Of The Loom tighty-whities.
- Well I guess you're right, I don't have any white underwear.
- user error. why would you have white underwear in the first place? terrible colour for hiding my skid stains when working under the neighbour's sink

I've still heard that you should wash new clothes on their own as they might have residual colour pigment in them which could affect your other clothes. But yeah, things have changed, and for the most part I don't care about that stuff anymore.
Maybe it's because we wash our clothes mostly around 40°C now and with enzymes as opposed to whatever the F they used to do.

I always wash new things separately now, after a I bought my son a Sonic blanket. That thing covered everything in the washer and dryer with blue fuzz.
- Mmmm... microplastics 🤤
You should wash all new clothes BEFORE you wear them. They spray them with poison and repellent to protect them from bugs and critters during shipping from across the world.

I've never had issues mixing unlike colors, I think the key is to set the water temp to cold.

Yeah as long as you don't fucking boil the mixed colours you'll be fine.
- Soup time!

did dyes/laundry detergent change/get better?

because I swear it was an issue when growing up.

Same with ironing clothes.

Yes, actually
A combination of better dyes that don't bleed as much, and detergent that works better in colder water (which bleeds less dyes).
https://youtu.be/HsmEl3P2vEM
- Yeah someone on tumblr (? Ok i forget where) had a great explanation about the improvements in “clothes-cleaning juice” over the years.
  Tl;dr it’s not a problem anymore, usually, but it used to be.
Depends on the items and their age, but yes, you should generally be fine.
The last time I had an issue was some coloured pillow cases that bled all over my white bedsheets.

It never happens. Untill it does. Ask me how I know.

Enjoy your new pink shirts though!

Solution: don't own white shirts
- Or yellow, or tan, or light grey, or baby blue, or anything striped with white/any of those colors…

It must be detergent or washers are easier on clothes. Growing up, all my clothes eventually became the same dirty pink color when I’d wash colors together. These days I just dump everything in and toss in some laundry soap, maybe some softener if we have it around, and I still have clothes that are 20 years old and in regular rotation. Colorful as always.

Its improvement in dyes more than anything, not detergent
- Yeah, could be. I still have some old stuff though (my grandpas shirt which has got to be 50 years old). I don’t wear it much, but I still wash it when I do..
Do you wash in hot or cold water?
- This is the right question. I always use cold water unless something is soiled. Or maybe towels if there's nothing else in there.
  I think detergents have gotten good enough to work just as well in cold water, and that's mostly why it's better.

go back few decades and it was a given, dye chemistry has changed since then, so it doesn't happen unless you buy a piece made by someone trying to save a penny on dye

Put in a freshly bought red item and something white. Works every time if you want your stuff to be pink.

Real rule:

You can drop them all together, coz all clothes are so low quality, those won't last long enough to lost colors during mixed washings.

Me who wears clothes that are 12+ years old:
also don't use a clothes dryer and your stuff will last way longer
- I just use a clothes dryer on low or, sometimes, even extra low. There’s an even an air-dry option that works better than just leaving things to hang.
  This goes especially for humid climates. My stuff would never in the summer and even in the winter it would take a long time. The button-ups and pants that I do hang to dry take forever to be ready.
- Why do dryers lower the lifespan of clothing?
Then there is someone like me that still wears 5 to 10 year old clothes that still look fresh 🙈
- where did you buy them?
Some additions.
You can mix colors, just don't add white clothes, especially when the color clothes are new.

I just have all black, no problems

🖤
This right here. The hell do you need multiple colors for?
I do prefer dark blue, though.
- My personal preference in color is incompatible with the local weather for half of the year.
This is the way.
You still have to sort the black turtlenecks from the Slightly Darker Black turtlenecks though.
- Or you can just leave'em all in and equalise the colours! No more worries, ever! Everything'll be carbon black and that's that!

White clothes and heavily colored stuff with a "wash separately first time" label goes separately. And thats about it 🤷

It's fine a nice cornflower blue on all your shirts is actually delightful

Cold water, separate white items. It really only takes a couple minutes. Eventually even if there isnt an immediate stark change in tint on the item, over time it'll steadily become more and more off-white. It looks noticeably worse imo.

one time my red pullover converted one of my white sjirts into a pink one, but otherwise ive got a clean slate in the last 10 years

Generally, the problem is if you wash brand new synthetic clothing, the dyes will be fresh and leak onto other clothes, this isnt really a problem if you have the same shirt for a long time or buy thriftee clothes

Is that a washing machine with a vertical drum?

Is that strange to you?
- Yes, as far as I know, all machines sold for domestic use here have drums aligned to the X-axis (top-loading with drum doors) or Z-axis (front-loading), never Y. I only saw a quick-spin-drying centrifuge in a swimming pool's hair-drying room.
  Edit: in engineering, I almost always see the Y axis as vertical. X is left-right and Z is backward (−)-forward (+) for a right-handed 3D Cartesian system. It's also like this in Super Mario 64.
Better for slam-dunking your clothes, as you can see.
I have one like that. It's a pain in the ass to grab socks from the bottom because I'm super short.
- I feel your pain. As a tall person, I hate front loaders cause I can't take anything out of the washer without hurting my back.
They’re called top-loaders and they’re so much less efficient that the Energy Star requirements straight up allow them to use more water than a front loader while still being called “high efficiency”.

I thought this was too, until I washed my white work clothes with a bright yellow shirt. Suddenly my white shirts look permanently dirty.

Going to sound dumb but get some Bluing Dye. The name is a bit of a misnomer. It'll brighten them back up
- This is the first I've ever heard of this substance. Thank you kind stranger!

Which is awesome. Because like the washing machine removes EVERYTHING.

Food? Gone. Cat hairball? Poof. Baby's diaper explosion? Like it never happened.

I think it only really matters if you're an organized freak who even folds their clothes after doing the laundry. The clean clothes aren't gonna get dirty sitting in the clean clothes basket.

My clothes live on the drying rack and the "not quite dirty yet" chair.

Do your colors on cold, do your whites on hot, your colors will last longer and your whites won't get so fucking dingy looking. It's not about bleed, it's about taking care of your clothes so they last a while.

By reading the comments, TIL that some people wash clothes with warm water. I have never even seen a washing machine that warms water.

I have never seen a washing machine that doesn't let you set the temperature first (between 30-90°C). I'm living in the EU.
The vast majority of washing machines do both hot and cold, at least in North America. Hot is the default. The machine doesn't make the water hot though, it just takes hot water from your hot water tank. This means that there are two machines that are running at the same time. You have a hot water tank that is going to be boiling more water and the washing machine that is using the hot water that is being boiled. To use cold water, you typically have to select the cold wash setting on most washers here in North America. In this case, it just takes water from the tap instead of the hot water tank.
- Some washing machines do also have the ability to heat water above 60°C for sterilisation purposes, as most domestic hot water heaters only do 40-50°C.
Where do you even live?
Ours which is at least 30 years old has hot/warm, warm/cold, and cold/cold.
I usually use hot/warm just because it fills faster. It's not warming the water. It's drawing the hot water from the hot water heater. If we use cold cold it will make sure to only draw cold water and it takes awhile. Hot means it just grabs all the water it can.
They don't usually have heating elements, they have hot water hookups and mix the two to achieve a certain temperature.
I have never even seen a washing machine that warms water.
For real?
- Same here, Mexico, no washing machine we ever had fiddles with temperature, and warming your water somethere else and then pouring it would be a pain
These days, lots of detergents actually work better in cold water. They contain enzymes for dissolving e.g. blood stains, and those enzymes are typically proteins, which fall apart when heated too much. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe (most?) proteins fall apart around 42°C. This might be simplifying far too much.
But yeah, basically you want to generally wash at 30°C.