How many kinds of loads do you do (i.e. how you seperate them)?  Is there a
particular order to your loads?

Here's my way:
Diapers first
light colored laundry next
darks last

25 responses total.

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I wash my clothes in several "loads", though depending on how long it's been
since i did laundry alst, a "load" may be three washers full:

Light colours/cold gentle
Dark colours/cold gentle
Sturdy/warm/normal
white cotton/hot/bleach/normal

I very often don't have enough to make a whole load of one or the other, in
which case I take clothes from one of the other loads (white cottons to fill
in the light delicates or dark "sturdy" to fill out the dark delicates, for
instance.)

My Mum is a stickler for proper sorting and when I left home I tried throwing
everything into one load just to rebel.  I ruined some very nice clothes thatw
ay and decided Mom was right.

Re #1: You read right.

Bjorn has a thing about diapers.
I wash laundry only when there is enough to do a large load all the same color
(color meaning light/white, red/orange/brown/black, or blue/green/black). 
Which is maybe every two weeks.  We wear our clothing until it smels or looks
dirty.  So one load is one washer-full, enough to also fill the clothesline.
Do not ever use the gentle setting, we don't own fragile clothing and the colr
has nothing to do with how sturdy the clothing is.  I will sometimes wash
white shirts and towels (not underwear) with hot water but usually cold, don't
care if things get a bit grey.  Once a month I have a very colorful
clothesline, all in blue-green-turguoise-black or red-orance-yellow-purple.
I do not understand wher even a family of four can find enough dirty clothing
to fill the washer every day (the so-called national average) or why people
cannot wait for enough of one color to fill the machine and use it more
efficiently.  I bought extra long underwear, nothing else runs out.

Maybe those are the folks who wash their sheets twice a week and use fresh
towels for every morning's shower, and wash all the doilies and table clothes
and table runners every week.  My Mom does.

I also shower only when I look or smell dirty and wash towels maybe once or
twice a month if they look or smell dirty.  Your mother must have a lot of
free time.  Jim had one housemate who would run the washer and the dryer every
night, after deciding what to wear the next day, and I had a housemate once
who filled the washing machine six times every Friday, could never figure out
what he put in there.

She's a dedicated homemaker, that's for sure.  But my DSad was very demanding.
;)

We wash to towels once a week or so -- we each have our own set.  And I
generally wear my outer clothes twice before washing them unless I dumpp food
on a blouse or something.  Otherwise I hang them up to air between wearings..

I wash doilies, table clothes, afghans, etc when they start to look or smell
a little too care worn.  (Maybe once a month or so --  we use placemats that
I wash as soon as they get dirty -- but that takes very little space in the
washer.  Napkins are washed twice a week.)

Nice to hear you are not going the paper route.

In the olden days, BME (Before the Married Era), I used to sort laundry 
into 2 types: clean and dirty. Clean got folded, somewhat, and put away. 
Dirty was washed in cold water and dried, regardless of what the 
instructions said. Maybe I had sturdy clothes then, but there were no 
casualties. 

Nowadays, my laundry, like my life, is more complicated. There are 
lights which need drying, lights which can't be dried, lights which are 
drying optional, and ditto for darks, not to mention the hot water load 
(towels, etc.) I still have trouble figuring out what goes where, much 
to my wife's dismay (like when she sees a very small, yet still wrinkled 
 favorite sweater). Maybe I should go back to the old system.

By drying I suppose you mean machine drying, all clothing can line dry.  What
sorts of clothing can be machine washed but not machine dried?  (Other than
rubber).

Anything with silk in it, most wool, anything with glued on
decorations...anything with elastic will only survive so many hours of drying
and then will turn hard instead of stretchy.  If you line dry it, elastic
lasts much longer.

I would never machine wash silk or wool either, the agitation will shrink them
and so will temperature changes.  (I do machine wash wool socks that are too
large for me, though).  

I was "stonewashed" silk blouses on the delicate cycle with cold wash, cold
rinse.  I have a few "partially wool" sweaters that I can wash on delicate
with tepid water.  Mostly, though I have all wool or all silk things
dry-cleaned.

Black.
Dark.
Light.
Delicate.
White. In that order, because of my thoery that running the last load with
bleach will help to discourage mildew growth in the unused-for-a while washer.
Note: all towels, no matter what color, are white. (At least now they are,
after being bleached! 8^> )

Mildew does not grow on metal, only on cloth or paint or plastic or other more
digestible substances.  Dirty clothing mildews faster because it has added
nutrients (skin oils).

That's what I was thinking of: rubber seals, plastic agitator, etc. 8^}

If the tub is allowed to dry out for a couple of hours after use, it will not
encourage mildew growth, and anyway if it did, the mildew will not get on your
clothing, it will wash off in the water.  Mildew spores are floating around
everywhere, the washing machine will not expose you to more of them.  What
is bad for your health is to be breathing the chlorine fumes from chlorine
bleach, so if you insist on bleaching use the safer dry stuff.  Chlorine can
be carcinogenic.  Mildew is pretty harmless unlesss you are very allergic.
And chlorine and its manufacture help deplete the ozone layer, it is not good
stuff to be adding to the ecosystem.  I have bleached mildewed clothing to
get the mildew smell out, but then discovered that leaving it in the sun on
a dry day works as well.  (It does not eliminate the grey stains, but then
chlorine bleach dissolves the fibers in your clothing and wears it out
faster).  Hydrogen peroxide is a mild bleach and atmospherically harmless,
I think.

Chlorine and its manufacture has no effect whatsoever upon the ozone
layer. Mildew can *induce* allergies, so is best avoided. What keesan
calls "dry stuff" is usually sodium perborate, which indeed is safer,
but also much less powerful as a bleach, while chlorine bleaches do
degrade textiles. Hydrogen peroxide is quite harmless except on you
at high concentrations (it can cause very painful chemical burns) as
it decomposes to only oxygen and water.

I went to a lecture claiming chlorine and/or its manufacture were very bad
for the ozone layer, but don't recall the details.  Mildew does not bother
me except for the smell, but I could not stand to be in the CCRB for long
because the swimming pool fumes made my nose and eyes burn, and it took a few
hours to recover.  I was several flights up from teh pool.

There is an anti-chlorine cult that goes overboard in its allegations
against chlorine. Chlorine *is* very hazardous, and its manufacture
and use *does* produce hazardous waste byproducts (and products that
can produce hazardous byproducts on bieng burned), but one should stick
to the facts and not create unfounded allegations. 

Chlorine and compounds made from it have been in wide use for more than
a century, but the destruction of the ozone layer did not become noticeable
until the introduction of chlorofluorocarbons (the freons, in particular)
in refrigeration systems.

(Can't believe I hadn't responded yet)

Dark
Light
Delicates

The delicates are anything that needs cold water and/or line drying.  This
load is usually about half the size of the others.  

I do laundry once a week.

This response has been erased.

Could you wear some sort of sleeping bra with pads in it to keep your shirts
dry?  Or do they get wet during nursing rather than after?

Currently waiting for a load of black clothes to dry so I can dry the blacks
that have been sitting in the washer since this morning so I can wash and dry
the dark delicates before going to bed so I will not have to go to work naked
tomorrow. They tend to frown on that.

Depending on how much is already in the appropriate shade, I either do 
sheets as a separate and final load or with lights or darks depending 
on the sheets.

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