How to Sort Your Laundry in Easy Steps?

One of the necessities in life is laundry as those people who wear clean clothes often look good and smart. Even the quality of the clothes is maintained when proper laundry is done. In this article, I am discussing How to Sort Your Laundry.

With busy lives, people find difficulty in taking enough time in doing laundry and often end up throwing clothes as it is in the washing machine. Due to this, sometimes clothes are seen to be spoilt and thus, it becomes extremely important to sort the clothes before washing. 

This is a safe and effective method to do laundry. By doing so, washing is done efficiently and also, damage to the clothes is avoided. 

Also, this method helps in maintaining the brightness of the clothes apart from enjoying cleaner clothes. With this method, you can even save your time and money. With proper sorting, the beloved sweaters, jeans, or t-shirts can be worn for a longer period. Sorting of the laundry can be done by categorizing the items of laundry and streamlining them. 

Things required before laundry

You will require some items before you start doing laundry and so, it’s better to keep the below-mentioned items ready before starting to sort the clothes. 

These items are laundry detergent, baskets, bleach, pre-treater, fabric softener, and hanger. 

Keeping these items handy will help a lot in laundry and makes this task easy for you.

Sorting the Laundry

Throwing the entire laundry once at a time into the washing machine is often an easy task but if you don’t want to turn a white shirt into a pink one after washing, it is advisable to separate the laundry. 

It is mentioned by American Cleaning Institute (ACI) that sorting of laundry can be done in three steps and these are:

1. Sorting by the color

This is the most obvious method of sorting to prevent mixing the color of one cloth with another. Under this method, dark-colored, colored, and white-colored clothes are separated into different piles. 

Since the light-colored synthetics are more prone to get dyed with other clothes during washing, so these clothes should be given more attention in sorting. 

Read: Best Top Load Washing Machine Under Rs 20000 in India

In the dark-colored pile, all the clothes with colors like purple, red, black, grey, and any dark-colored cloth, are accumulated. And clothes with lighter tones like neon or pastel colors are kept in the colored piles.

2. Sorting by fabric type 

Normally, the clothes which you wear are often of different fabric types. Thus, it becomes extremely important to sort the clothes based on fabrics also. 

To avoid any kind of fabric damage, the clothes can be sorted in the following way-

• Delicate fabric – Some fabrics are delicate like silk, chiffon, lace, pantyhose, lingerie, etc. These items should be kept in a separate pile.

• Denim – Denim is used by each of us and often there are a lot of types of denim in the laundry. It is better to make a separate pile of this denim and wash them separately or you can even add them in the pile of dark color.

• Bedding and towels – During washing, the normal loads should be washed separately from the household items. For this, the towels and bedding sheets should be separated into different piles. This will ensure that the dirt on these sheets does not get a stick on the normal clothes.

3. Sorting by stains

Perspiration leads to form invisible stains on the clothes. Also, some of your clothes are lightly soiled when they are worn for a shorter period. 

The clothes of babies and toddlers are highly stained which may require more deep washing. 

Due to different levels of staining on the clothes, it is better to sort the clothes based on stains as well. If this is not done, the dirt of one cloth gets over the other resulting in getting unclean clothes even after washing. 

Under this method, heavily soiled clothes should be separated from lightly stained ones. The reason behind this, some kind of pre-treating method is required in the case of heavily soiled clothes. By doing so, the cleaning becomes effective.

4. Pre-Treating Stains

Once the laundry is sorted and the heavily stained clothes are separated, the next step is to pre-treat the tough stains. This ensures that your clothes look fresh and clean. 

Depending on the stains, the pre-treating method is decided like a method of removing an ink stain is different from removing the stain of butter or a hair dye. 

Despite this, there is a common way that works in almost all the stains and this is vinegar and water mixture. 

For this, in a spray bottle, mix equal parts of vinegar and water and spray on the stained clothes. Keep the clothes as it is for 5-10 minutes and then wash them. This will help you to get the clothes free from stains easily.

5. Selecting the right detergents

There are many different brands of detergents available in the market and these are made for different kinds of clothes. Along with the standard laundry detergents, some detergents are available for delicate laundry as well. 

The detergent that fits well in your load should always be selected for washing the clothes. If you want to have a natural detergent, you can even make your detergent or use vinegar for laundry. 

After selecting the detergent, an important step to add the proper amount of detergent in washing the sorted laundry. For this, after measuring the load size of the laundry, the detergent should be added accordingly. Even a dispenser can be used which helps in adding the correct amount of the detergent.

Also Read: Best Front Loading Fully Automatic Washing Machines in India

Final Thoughts

Out of all household tasks, the one that needs much time is laundry. It is often advised to do laundry daily so that you do not end up with a huge pile of dirty clothes which will require a lot much time as expected. Also, sorting the laundry first before washing will give a cleaner result and also save your clothes from getting spoil.