1. Use Good Machines
It’s important to have a washer and dryer that can handle the volume of laundry in your home efficiently. Hanging onto older machines may seem like a smarter strategy, but this may cost more in the medium to long term. Older appliances use more water and energy, leading to higher utility bills, and the washing results may not be up to your standards. If you upgrade to new machines, you may notice a boost in performance, and your energy bills will be lower.
2. Organize Your Working Area
When you think about a new washer and dryer, consider the layout and size of your laundry room carefully. If you only have a smaller space, it’s a great idea to choose a front loading pair of stackable machines to make the most of the floor space. But, if you have space and you want to store laundry related products, such as detergent, bleach, and softeners, nearby go with a side by side configuration. This will allow you to use pedestal bases with built-in storage drawers to keep the space tidy.
3. Always Pre-Sort Your Clothes
Pre-sorting clothes improves your laundry results, but it can take more time unless you introduce a new routine for the entire family. Place a multi-compartment laundry hamper in every closet and train your family to sort their laundry by color. If you can get them to set aside clothes that require hand washing or dry cleaning, that’s an added bonus. The laundry for washing should be sorted into two piles; they are:
- Whites, greys, pastels, and prints on a white background.
- Darker and deeper colors such as: black, brown, red, green, navy and dark grey.
This can be a hard routine to establish, but a reward system works wonders, and it instills good habits for adulthood.
4. Wash Heavily Soiled Items Separately
If you have a very dirty pair t-shirt or a pair of jeans that’s heavily soiled it’s a good idea to wash them separately. Any item of clothing that has oil stains, ground in dirt, wine stains, and mud can affect other items in your laundry load. These types of stains have a nasty habit of transferring the dirt to other pieces of clothing in your washing machine as it runs through its cycle. Collect all heavily soiled items together and run them through a separate wash together and check the results. Some items may need a second wash, but they are often clean enough to add back into your regular laundry.
5. Make Smart Choices on Laundry Products
Many of us become used to using certain laundry products because we grew up with them, or we enjoy using them. But, some of the more traditional detergents that use heavy suds are not a good fit for a modern high efficiency washing machine. These types of appliances are designed to wash more effectively using less suds to get your laundry clean. Switching to laundry products that are specifically designed to work with high efficiency appliances is advisable, and certain machines can even clean lightly soiled items using steam alone!
If your washer is having difficulty, you can rely on a professional home appliance technician. For help and guidance with any appliance repair issue, be sure to speak to a professional appliance repair service.