Laundry Tips

Tips and tricks for washing and drying your laundry.

Before we get started with the tips and tricks for washing and drying your laundry, let’s answer one of the most important questions: What do the laundry symbols on the care label in my textiles mean?

There are five symbols that are particularly important:

  • The bucket or tub stands for washing.
  • The square with the circle stands for drying.
  • The iron stands for ironing.
  • The circle stands for dry cleaning.
  • The triangle stands for bleaching.

Before we get started with the tips and tricks for washing and drying your laundry, let’s answer one of the most important questions: What do the laundry symbols on the care label in my textiles mean?

There are five symbols that are particularly important:

  • The bucket or tub stands for washing.
  • The square with the circle stands for drying.
  • The iron stands for ironing.
  • The circle stands for dry cleaning.
  • The triangle stands for bleaching.

Washing tips

Step 1: First sort your laundry by fabric type. This is important because a different type of detergent is used depending on the type of fabric. Different types of fabric are, for example:

  • ‘Robust’ textiles
    Towels, bed sheets, duvet covers and tea towels. These can usually be washed hotter than other fabrics.
  • Easy-care textiles
    T-shirts, shirts and jumpers made of cotton and jeans trousers (denim pants). These types of clothing are usually not very sensitive.
  • Functional clothing such as sportswear or outdoor clothing
    Leggings, shorts and sports tops made of functional materials are a special case as the material is quite sensitive. Additionally, the smell of sweat needs to be washed out of the clothes!
  • Delicate textiles
    Delicate materials such as wool or silk should be washed separately. Ideally using the special hand or silk/wool washing programme with a suitable detergent.

Step 2: Now sort the clothes by colour. As clothes with deep colour are more likely to bleed dye when washed, only similar colours should be put into the washing machine together. Like this you avoid the white t-shirt suddenly turning pink.

Step 3: To make sure that the individual clothes can all be washed at the same temperature, take a quick look at the care label. Maybe it’s necessary to put some of those clothes in separate piles.

  • Robust textiles
    Can usually be washed at very high temperatures (between 60°C and 95°C).
  • Easy-care textiles
    Should usually only be washed at 40°C.
  • Functional clothing such as sportswear or outdoor clothing
    Should be washed separately at 30°C. Most washing machines have a programme specifically for sportswear.
  • Delicate textiles
    Should generally only be washed cold or at a maximum of 30°C. Normally the washing machine’s hand wash programme is best suited.

Delicate textiles include, for example, shirts made of viscose, blouses made of silk, jumpers made of wool or swimwear. Select an ‘easy-care’ or ‘delicates’ washing programme for delicate textiles. Except for wool and silk! These should be washed in a special hand wash or silk/wool washing programme. Make sure that the machine is only loaded to ¼ (maximum half).

Heavy-duty detergent, colour detergent and mild detergent – there is basically a different type of detergent for every type of fabric. In addition, special detergents are used, for example for black fabrics or delicate natural fibres. Detergents are available in many different forms, for example as powder, liquid, tablets or pods. But the question is: Do you really need so many different types of detergent?

  • Heavy-duty detergent
    This type of detergent is optimal for easy-care white laundry. You can find many different types of heavy-duty detergent. It’s available as powder, beads, in liquid form, as gel, as pods etc. For white laundry, however, powdered heavy-duty detergent has the best cleaning effect because it contains surfactants, enzymes, brighteners and bleaching agents that help your laundry stay extra white.
    Good to know: Powdered heavy-duty detergent is an effective protection against bacteria. Therefore, run a 60°C washing cycle at least once a month so that the bleaching agent can unfold at high temperature and kill the germs.
  • Colour-safe detergent
    This type of detergent makes sure that your colourful clothes stay colourful. It ensures the best washing results for coloured textiles. It contains neither bleach nor optical brighteners, takes care of the fibres and contains special ingredients to prevent colours from fading. A little tip: Even for dark and black laundry, colour-safe detergents achieve the best results. So, there is no need for any additional special detergent e.g., for black clothes.
  • Detergent for delicates
    This type of detergent is ideal for washing and taking care of delicate laundry. It is best used for clothes made of wool, silk, etc. as it is designed to achieve an optimum effect at low washing temperatures and contains neither bleaching agents nor optical brighteners. This type of detergent also creates more foam than other detergents and is therefore particularly gentle on delicate materials. Important: Wool is similar to human hair and requires very special treatment. In terms of ingredients, wool wash detergents are quite comparable to shampoo and protect the structure of the sensitive natural fibre. Therefore, it is important to be careful and avoid bringing wool into contact with conventional detergents. These contain enzymes that destroy the wool fibres.
  • Detergent for sportswear
    This is the best way to clean your functional clothing. Always use a liquid sportswear detergent for functional clothing or sportswear as it is explicitly designed for the properties of these fabrics. It carefully cleans dirty and sweaty sportswear, protects the fibres and neutralises bad odours.

Dose the detergent according to the manufacturer’s instructions on the back of the packaging. The instructions usually distinguish between how dirty your clothes are (lightly, moderately and heavily soiled) and water hardness. It is therefore advisable to sort the laundry according to how dirty the clothes are. As a rule of thumb, the dirtier the laundry, the higher the detergent dosage. This means that if the clothes are only a little bit dirty, use correspondingly less detergent. With regard to water hardness, the harder the water, the more lime it contains and the higher the detergent dosage (usually it already contains a descaler). The exact dosing quantities differ depending on the detergent. For example, a liquid detergent requires different quantities than a washing powder.

Important: Do not overdose the detergent! Too much detergent does not produce a better washing result but is expensive and at the same time harms the environment. As the detergent consumption increases, so does the water consumption of the washing machine, because too much detergent creates more foam and additional rounds of rinsing with clear water becomes necessary. Overdosing can also result in detergent residues in the washing machine detergent drawer. Therefore: Dose detergent according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

A little tip: Measuring cups for powder detergents are available free of charge at some drugstores (in Germany) or on the manufacturer’s website. Just have a look or ask.

The best thing is to always treat the stains directly and not let them dry out. Pre-treating stains avoids the unnecessary use of resources such as water, electricity and detergent. Without pre-treatment, the load of washing would have to be washed hotter and/or with more detergent.

If the washing machine is too full, your laundry can’t move properly in the drum. As a result, your laundry will not be cleaned properly. Therefore, only load the machine to ¾. This way your laundry will not remain dirty and wet but will come out of the machine nice and clean. When washing wool, however, the machine should only be loaded to ¼ (maximum half).

The symbols on the care label in your textiles tell you at how many degrees you can wash your clothes. The washing symbol also tells you which washing program is the best choice for a particular piece of clothing.

  • Cotton
    You can select a normal program with a low washing temperature of 30°C or 40°C.
  • ‘Robust’ textiles
    For this, you can usually select a program that washes your clothes at 60°C, 70°C or 95°C, depending on whether it is a mixed fabric and whether the clothes are colourful or not.
  • Easy-care cotton bed linen and underwear
    These can usually be washed at high temperatures.
  • Easy-care textiles
    These should generally only be washed at 30° or 40°C.
  • Functional clothing such as sportswear or outdoor clothing
    You should wash these separately at 30°C. Most washing machines have a program especially for sportswear.
  • Delicates, wool and silk
    These should only be washed cold or at 30°C maximum. The hand wash program or a program especially for delicates at a low temperature is best suited.

If you have checked the laundry symbols and know the material composition of the garment, you can also use this information to select a suitable detergent.

Take your wet laundry out of the machine as soon as possible. This way you avoid wrinkled and unhygienic laundry and you also ensure that the next user can use the machine. Activate the push or e-mail notifications to stay informed about the status of your laundry.

Dryer tips

One look at the care instructions is enough to know whether your clothes are allowed in the dryer or not.

If your laundry is still dripping wet when you take it out of the washing machine, you should activate another spin cycle to get the excess water out. Because if you put really wet laundry into the dryer, it will take a very long time for the laundry to dry, also the result will not be what you would expect.

As with the washing machine, you should be careful not to overload the dryer. If the dryer is too full, the clothes will not have enough space to move around and won’t be dried evenly because the air cannot circulate properly. If the clothes have room to move, the hot air circulates much better and the clothes dry much faster.

Separate the clothes from each other before putting them in the dryer. This means take the washed clothes and shake them out, so they don’t stick together. If your clothes are tangled up, they will not only take longer to dry, but also come out of the dryer wrinkled. Also, make sure that you do not put too many clothes in the dryer.

To make sure that everyone using the shared laundry room is happy and enjoys washing and drying their clothes there, it is important that you clean the lint filter after each drying cycle. This is more hygienic for everyone involved and prevents poor drying results.

There is always a certain amount of residual moisture in the dryer, which is partly due to the high temperatures used to dry the clothes. If you don’t take your laundry out of the dryer promptly once it finished, the clothes will soak up the residual moisture. This will result in your clothes getting very wrinkly. If, on the other hand, you take the clothes out of the dryer immediately after the program finished and fold them, you usually don’t even need to iron them. Activate the push or e-mail notifications to always stay informed about the status of your laundry.

You didn’t find an answer to your question? Please contact our customer support at support@we-wash.com