If you’re new to doing laundry, it can be hard to know where to start. There are washer settings to understand, an overwhelming number of detergent options and stains that need to be treated — whatever that even means! What “stain treatment” even means, as well as which detergents and wash cycles to use, are essential parts of understanding the basics of how to do laundry. In this guide, we’ll cover those topics, as well as how to gather and separate laundry, and the best way to dry clothing to prevent damage. Even if you’re an old hand when it comes to wash day, you might learn about an approach to laundry you hadn’t considered, or discover a trick you never knew about. So stick around! We’ll have some fun. (Really!)
The first step to doing laundry is to make the choice to do laundry — there are typically three triggers driving the choice:
- It’s a designated laundry day.
- The laundry hamper is overflowing.
- You find yourself wearing a bathing suit as underpants.
Rachel Hoffman, a cleaning and organizing expert and the author of Unf*ck Your Habitat and Cleaning Sucks, specializes in helping people who find cleaning overwhelming establish systems for household tasks; she offers this simple but very helpful advice for managing laundry: “Do laundry at regular intervals. For some people it’s once a week, for others, it’s more.”
If you’re a person who uses the hamper to signal that wash day has arrived, a lidded model is a smart choice because it will keep you honest — when the lid won’t close, it’s time to do the laundry.