Dappered Classics – How to do your laundry
Originally Published 10/27/10
A good percentage of the male population does laundry one way: Stuff in as much as you can, no matter what color or fabric, and wash it on warm. That’s a great way to shorten the life of your clothes if not kill them outright. Here’s a quick and dirty ( figuratively and literally) way to do laundry, with just a bit more purpose and care:
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Break your laundry into five piles, and wash them in this order:
1. Plain White Dress Shirts – Wash on cold, short cycle.
2. Blue or Striped Dress Shirts and light colored chinos – Wash on cold, short cycle.
3. Nice Lights – Wash on cold, normal cycle.
4. Nice Darks – Wash on cold, short cycle if you’ve got jeans in there.
5. Crap (gym clothes, old stuff, etc…) – Wash on warm, long cycle.
*For Drying: Follow the instructions on the tag and be cautious.
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Final Tips:
Check your pockets – All it takes is one rogue Lip Balm
Denim care – For sub $80 jeans, wash inside out once every few weeks, unless they’re noticeably dirty.
Wool care – You could hand wash, or you could take it to the dry cleaner when it’s noticeably dirty/stinky.
Don’t leave it in the washer – Leaving a damp load in the washer for more than 24 hours and it’ll get musty. If you live in a humid climate like in the south? Don’t even risk it.
Embrace ugly and used: Sure the $600 model looks cool. But spending $50 every few years on an old beatup Sears washer via Craigslist has yet to do me wrong.
Clean your trap: Clean the lint trap every load. The dryer will work better, and it won’t burn down your house.
Ignore the snuggle bear: You don’t need fabric softener. Use a dryer sheet.
Never wash blazers: Even if it’s 100% cotton, unstructured, and the tag says you can. Dry clean only.
Never wash your significant other’s stuff: Don’t their stuff. She/he has a system that’s not yours.
Anything else? Got any laundry secrets or horror stories? Leave them in the comments section below…
Top photo credit: this guy
I disagree with a few things here.
Firstly, you don’t need a dryer. Just hang things out in the air. It’s much better on the clothes, and on the environment. If it’s not sunny enough outside, buy a clothes rack and hang the clothes in your living room.
Secondly, you can wash anything on a cold cycle.
Thirdly, if you’re living with a lady, ask her what her system is, learn it, and offer to wash her clothes. Infinite bonus points if you do it reasonably.
Hmmm a little confused here. By “oxford shirts,” are you referring to dress shirts? Oxford refers to the type of weave of a dress shirt, so all oxfords are dress shirts, but not all dress shirts are oxfords. Most of my dress shirts indicate that I can wash them in warm water with like colors (so wash lights and darks separately), then hang dry.
In general, I end up sorting clothes this way:
Warm lights
Warm brights
Warm darks
Hot underwear/socks
Cold like-colored delicates (including jeans)
When in doubt: always, always, always follow the instructions on your garment’s tag. Thinking that maybe you can get away with putting a cold-washed sweater in the dryer on low heat for a few minutes to get rid of excess water before drying flat, even though the tag says dry flat only? Don’t even try it, it will most likely shrink a size down (happened to me).
The thing with new washers is that not only do they look cool, they’re EXTREMELY water efficient… your water bill will decrease significantly if you have one of these puppies.
Agree with Tess. We noticed a big difference when upgrading to a more expensive washer/dryer.
Instead of a dryer sheet, you can take a couple of sheets of aluminum foil and wrap into a ball. Use that in the dryer to remove static. Don’t use fabric softener. We had our washing machine repaired and the repair guy said that the easiest preventable issues with washers had to do with fabric softener that is not really necessary. He said you can buy a detergent with some fabric softener included but the extra stuff you put in just gums up the parts. I no longer buy dryer sheets either as the aluminum ball does the job and can be recycled in 4-6 weeks.
what about if you live in a city and need to take your clothes to a laundromat, each load costing you money?
i am actually lazy and just go for wash & fold service.. which is probably bad
@Markus: For simplicity’s sake (although maybe not accuracy’s) sake, I usually refer to dress button ups as oxfords. A “Button up” to me is more casual. Usually worn untucked. I do see what you’re saying though about how it’s confusing (oxford cloth oxford, vs… non oxford cloth oxford? Is that really possible?) It’s kinda how most lace-ups are called oxfords this day, vs. bluchers. I myself am not that particular, but can at the same time respect that attention to detail.
“Never wash HER stuff: Live with a lady? Lucky you. Don’t wash her stuff. She has a system that’s not yours.”
Most important one on the list!!
“Never wash her stuff.”
Really? I might recommend combining your rules with hers to find the most efficient laundry regime. If I am doing five loads, and she is doing six, that’s 11 loads of laundry per week, not including kids (should you be so lucky). That is madness.
Better yet, find a way to get her to do your laundry. The key is making it seem like it is her idea and feigning resistance. Muahahahaha.
Just kidding. My girlfriend and I used to just combine all our clothes when making loads and take turns going to change it. One rule we did have, though, is I never FOLD her clothes haha.
“Firstly, you don’t need a dryer. Just hang things out in the air. It’s much better on the clothes, and on the environment. If it’s not sunny enough outside, buy a clothes rack and hang the clothes in your living room.”
Agreed. I hang dry ALL my clothes religiously. Lost way too many nice garments to heat shrinkage. Oh, coldwater wash on EVERYTHING too.
@Jack Scott, Joe, and Joe G. – Not to sound too boastful, but this is what I like about our little corner of the internet. You’ve got guys who don’t use a dryer because of the damage it can do to the clothes, posting along side a guy who puts tin foil in his dryer to eliminate static electricity. Almost makes me misty eyed. For me personally, I just don’t have the patience for air drying and thus, accept the beating my clothes take in the dryer. Plus, if I hung the clothes up or laid them flat, the the cats would probably use my clothes as a makeshift scratching post, or worse… a substitute for their litter box.
Hi there, nice article, enjoyed reading it, but
I’m not sure our washing machines are the same here in the UK as they are in the US.
Does ‘Cold’ to you mean the same as to us? For us that means just water from the cold pipe, i.e. about 15 degrees Celsius.
What does ‘Warm’ mean? For us I guess that’d be 30 or 40 degC.
Also, what does short and long cycle mean? We have many many different programs, for instance whether for cottons, synthetics, delicates, wools, and each have a different length of time, and the times even vary between temperatures. What times were you thinking of?
Would you be able to give a more accurate description of what you mean?
Many Thanks!
Rob
@Rob: Oh boy, had to google up a C to F conversion widget. Cold is just from the cold pipe. Warm is about what you’re looking for. Room temp, little warmer than that. Short cycle is probably delicates. I run my short cycle about 7 minutes or so. Hope that helps!
Thanks for the prompt reply Joe!
Wow only 7 minutes with cold water? and that gets things clean?? I’m impressed! That’s so far from the warm water temperatures that garment labels suggest and the 100minute normal cycles that washing machines have that I never would’ve thought it!
There are certain items that I hang dry (items that are prone to “shrinkage”), but for the most part I use the dryer. For those we hang dry everything, kudos to you for saving the planet, but don’t you spend a lot of time ironing as a result? My stuff that I hang dry always needs a good ironing before I wear it, while stuff from the dryer rarely does.
+1 for a drying rack.
I would love to do this. Thing is I have to PAY for each load.
I pay for my dress shirts to get laundered and pressed (usually about $2/shirt). Wool goes to the dry cleaners ($5). But just about everything else goes into one load in the washer at the laundromat. I used to be religious about separating colors (usually meaning 2 or 3 loads) but now it’s just so much cheaper and easier to throw it all in one wash. Down side to that though is that I wear white a whole lot less often.
sly way of recycling an old topic
How do you launder those Express Signature Polos?
Cold wash, dryer.
“Live with a lady? Lucky you. Don’t wash her stuff. She has a system that’s not yours.”
Good article. But I really wish less people used that cocky, unmistakably living-in-a-basement tone of voice. I hear it so often on the Internet that I’ve christened it: I call it the dick tone. Why don’t people talk like that in real life? Probably because no one would talk to them. Good article though.