The biggest mistake I found I have made in doing my laundry is letting the dryer cool off in between loads! It dawned on me that each time that happens the dryer has to be REHEATED, starting all over. If you pay closer attention as you empty one dryer load and have the next one ready to go to save a little bit of that heat!
Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
By law, the instructions on the detergent box/bottle give the amount needed to saturate the laundry/water. You should not really use this much. Also, it almost never takes into account the washer's capacity. One can easily cut the amount of detergent in half (or less) and get their laundry just as clean. Since soap attracts dirt, you don't want any extra left in your clothes after washing them. This in itself will double how long the detergent lasts and the life of your clothes.
Great advice! I tend to do my laundry as quick as possible and I hadn't realized I was using my dryer consistently. I don't dry my clothes to an absolute dry condition. It's too hard on the fabrics. I was reading recently about how much soap to use and the advice given was 2 tablespoons for front loaders.
This is true of any heating appliance that you want to continue using. For example, if I'm toasting more than 2 slices of bread, I toast them in rapid succession so that the coils don't cool off. Likewise for an electric griddle, toaster oven, etc.
Of note, your advice is more applicable to electric dryers than gas dryers because gas flames heat the air nearly instantly. In other words, the flame is always at its maximum temperature whereas an electric coil needs to warm up.
Suds used to be a good judge of soapiness but after the US government banned phosphates from laundry detergent, they became low sudsing. Some brands will generate very few bubbles even when there is an adequate amount of detergent. This is even truer now with High Efficiency (HE) soaps made front loaders and high efficiency top loaders. You will often see no suds at all.
Good article explaining HE laundry detergent, i.e. suds:
laundry.about.com/
Good Consumer Reports article
www.consumerreports.org/
Stopping the dryer before the cool down period stops the fan from blowing across the heating element. This can cause the element to overheat and warp or even cause a fire.
Just wanted to let you know for everyones safety that there is a reason why there is a cool down period after a dryer cycle and not letting the dryer finish it's cool down cycle can cause a fire instantly and it also damages the dryer and causes malfunctions, which could later on cause a fire. If the fan immediately stops running. The heating element continues to give off latent heat and can suddenly get extra hot inside. This could cause a TOC to trip, or an element could warp.
Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
