Here's How To Fix Some Mistakes You Might Be Making When Doing Laundry

Whether it’s too much detergent, over soaking or overheating, you are probably doing your laundry wrong.Show more

We, humans, spend on average 23,214 hours over the course of our lives doing laundry. To sum it up, that is over two and a half years. People used to run water through garments to remove stains and would literally beat the stains out with rocks and bats. After centuries of washboards, scrub buckets, and hand-cranked machines, in 1906 someone thought to introduce the electric washing machine into our everyday lives. Technology may have improved the quality of our lives by improving the way we clean our clothes, but it has also introduced a myriad of ways for us to do it wrong.

The first mistake is the one almost everybody makes - using too much laundry detergent. Using more of the already expensive stuff isn’t going to make your clothes any cleaner. In fact, excess suds can actually hold dirt pulled from clothes and keep it in areas that are hard to rinse, like under a shirt’s collar.

The next common laundry faux pas is rubbing stains furiously. It can actually make the stain worse and wear away the fabric. Instead, just dab it off instead of rubbing by dabbing from the outside inward. If anything, it will contain it.

Another mistake people make is washing their clothes too often. Think about it - if you wash your clothes after just one wear gives you more loads and therefore more energy and water usage wasted on the chore.

You probably even overstuff your machine. Think of your clothing as a teenager - give it space! The principle goes that if you overstuff the machine, not all the clothes will get cleaned. If you overstuff the dryer, things will get wrinkled, which is the opposite of what the machine is supposed to do.

Love a good dryer sheet? Actually, the best way to use them is to not! Instead, opt out for dryer balls because they are reusable and less chemically toxic.

Now that you know all this stuff, it is a good time to start practicing it and start saving money by keeping it clean.