The two-line email from my old landlord that finally fixed my laundry routine
I used to spend like 45 min every Sunday sorting and treating stains before washing, and I hated it. Then my old landlord, this guy named Dale who managed our building for 20 years, saw me hauling a basket down and just said, "You're overthinking it, spray everything with the cheap stuff, toss it all in cold, and check pockets twice." I laughed it off at first, but after three weeks of trying his way, I cut my whole laundry block down to under 20 min and the stains actually got better, not worse. The trick was that I was using hot water and pre-soaking stuff that didn't need it, which was setting the stains in. Now I only do a separate load for my work clothes with the heavy duty stuff, everything else goes together on cold. Has anyone else gotten a simple piece of advice from a random person that totally beat all the online guides you were following?
Cold water changed everything for me too. My mom told me years ago to stop using hot water on stains because heat basically cooks the protein into the fabric, and I ignored her for way too long. Once I switched to cold and stopped soaking stuff overnight, my shirts stopped coming out looking worse than when they went in. The other thing nobody tells you is that you can just wash almost everything together as long as you sort by color and not by some complicated system. I do one load for darks, one for lights, and that is it. Twenty minutes of actual work, rest is just the machine running while I do something else. Simple advice from people who have actually done the chore for years beats a 12 step guide every time.