10 Laundry Mistakes That Ruin Your Clothes — The Old Farmhouse Rules

10 Laundry Mistakes That Ruin Your Clothes — The Old Farmhouse Rules There is a towel on the rack in your bathroom that does not smell clean, and the white of it is not white anymore either. You have washed it. You washed it again with more soap. And it came out exactly the same. It is not you, and it is not your machine. That smell is a residue that never left the cloth. It has been building for years, and the reason it will not come out is that every time you try harder, you add more of the very thing that put it there. Soap that does not rinse out stays in the fibers, and leftover soap is sticky. It holds body oil, it holds dirt, and it gives bacteria something to live in. The sour smell, the stiff towels, the dull darks and half the gray in your whites are not four problems. They are one. In this one I go through ten rules for laundry the way it was done before there was a bottle for every problem in the house, counting down to the one that changes everything. ➤ WHAT IS IN IT Why a machine packed to the lid cannot clean anything, and the hand test for how full is full. Why turning things inside out adds years to dark clothes. What is actually growing inside your washing machine and how to get it out with vinegar. Why heat is the one thing in that room that can take a piece of cloth away from you for good. Why your whites went gray, which has nothing to do with dirt and everything to do with your pipes. And the free thing your grandmother did that no machine in your house can do. ➤ WHAT YOU NEED -Plain white vinegar -Washing soda or borax, if your water is hard -A clothesline or a sunny spot outside -A tablespoon ➤ WHAT I MENTION For a normal load, one to two tablespoons of detergent is enough, and for a high efficiency front loader, less. The cap on most bottles holds far more than that. Hard water minerals bind to soap before it reaches the dirt, and the gray curd they leave in the weave is what dulls white cotton. Sunlight both bleaches and disinfects, which is why line dried sheets smell the way they do. ➤ SOURCES Reader's Digest, on using too much laundry detergent Don's Appliances, on how much soap a washing machine actually needs Whirlpool, on HE detergent and low water levels Tell me in the comments which of these ten you had never heard of in your life. And tell me your county, because I am always curious where the different ways of doing this came from. I read every one. Nothing here is lost. Just untaught. #laundry #laundrytips #farmhouse #oldways #homemaking