Doing laundry the "green" way

Tomorrow is Saturday, which is Laundry Day at the Jennebach home. Since I'm the stay-at-home dad, I get to do a bunch of chores, laundry being just one of them. When we bought appliances for our house three years ago, we decided to get a front-loader washer and dryer. We've been very happy with our purchase - it has great capacity, gets clothes clean and seems to be running very efficiently, as far as I can tell.

There are a few things to keep in mind when doing laundry, be it in a front-loader or "regular" washer - these tips can help you save water, energy and detergent, which will translate to money in your pocket:

• Find the right temperature: most clothes don't need to be washed in hot or even warm water, and none of them need to be rinsed in warm water at all. The warmer your water, the more it will cost per load. In our house, we pretty much wash towels and anything seriously soiled in hot/cold. Everything else gets washed in cold/cold.
• Which brings us to the second point - detergent. Make sure to use the right detergent, and the right amount. Using more detergent will not make your clothes cleaner, but will be money wasted.
• Next, load the machine to capacity, but not beyond. A full load utilizes the washer best - overloading it could damage it.

When it comes to drying, there are a few easy things you can do to save time, energy and money:

• Shake out each item before tossing it in the dryer (I'm skipping the clothesline because it's most likely impractical for 90% of us Minnesotans, but if you use one, good for you!). It will get some wrinkles out and "air" the piece at the same time, so the dryer will be able to keep it fluffy and dry it faster.
• Take your laundry out of the dryer immediately after it's finished drying. It will fold easier and have fewer wrinkles.
• Run your dryer loads as close together as possible. That way, the dryer stays warm from load to load and saves energy to "re-heat".

Do you have any favorite tricks you use when doing laundry? Any preferred detergent? Let me know - I'm always up for suggestions...

Comments

[BonniK]

Unfortunately, some of the new higher end high efficiency machines do not have drain screens, so if you are not extra double duty careful, you will blow out a pump every time that penny gets through. New pump plus labor = $200. Won't mention names. They know who they are.

[Stephan Jennebach]

Great tip, Bonnie. I checked my washer after reading your comment and found that it does have a drain screen. I openend it to make sure it was free of debris, and it looked very clean. I guess I look at that little hatch all the time, but never really thought about its purpose:)