You have to approach laundry as a diligent task. Otherwise you may wind up with clothes that need to be rewashed, or worse, replaced. Bad laundry habits can also lead to your clothing wearing out sooner than it should. At one time or another I’ve made all of the following laundry mistakes. And hey, sometimes when I am in a rush to get “Mount Washmore” done, I still do make these mistakes, as you will see. But I wanted to share them with you in the hopes that you can avoid these mistakes whenever possible.
Yesterday morning, my eldest was off to school, and my two younger ones were happily playing with their toys. I started folding some laundry, which contained brand new underwear for my daughter, as well as other light colored clothes. To my frustration, there were brown spots on some of the clothes, including the new ones. What could have caused the spots? My guess is that a chocolate wrapper must have been left in a pocket. The wrapper contained just enough chocolate crumb to cause the staining. Sigh. I made two mistakes in my laundry which caused the spots: not checking the pockets before I washed everything, and not checking the clothes after the washer and before they went into the dryer.
By not checking the pockets of your clothing first, there are all sorts of things that can get washed that shouldn’t from crayons to money. My friend recently wrote on her blog that she accidentally washed her husband’s paycheck.
Here are some other laundry mistakes.
Not separating the clothes first. Just piling a big lump of clothes in the washer without separating by color or level of care means that you may machine wash a hand wash item causing it to stretch or shrink, or have pink underwear. The possible damage can be reduced by washing items in cold all of the time.
Check back tomorrow when I continue with the biggest laundry mistakes and see if you recognize any that you do yourself!
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.
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