How Separating Laundry Impacts Clothing and Appliance Quality

While the world of laundry isn’t exactly one rife with debate, there’s one topic you’ll find a variety of opinions on: Separating clothing and other laundered items. Some people absolutely swear by the practice, while others will tell you it’s overrated and not actually useful.

At All Pro Appliance, our appliance service areas include washer repair, dryer repair and every other area you can think of related to laundry needs. Did you realize that the way you separate – or don’t separate – your laundry can have an impact not only on the quality of your wash and individual clothing pieces, but also on the longevity of your washer and dryer? Let’s look at a few important themes to consider here, including how separating properly may actually extend the lifespan of your laundry appliances.

Laundry Splitting Categories

There are a few notable categories available when it comes to splitting your laundry up, including each of the following:

• Care instructions: The top factor in most cases here should be the label on the piece of clothing or material being washed. Care labels will tell you important information like whether the piece can be machine-washed and dried, whether specific temperatures are required, and whether you can use additives like bleach. Following these will benefit not only the clothing itself but also the washer.
• Fabric material: You may also sort by fabric and garment weight, separating lighter items from heavier ones to wash separately.
• Soil type: If you have items that have been heavily soiled by dirt or oil, it’s generally good to separate these from other clothes. This prevents transferring these oils or odors to cleaner clothes, and to the washer in some cases.
• Color: Finally, while you’ll hear differing opinions on separating colors during laundry time, many people do choose to do it. The simplest format here is separating lights and darks.

Potential Concerns

So what might happen if you don’t bother to separate your clothes during washing and drying? This depends on your materials and appliances to some degree, but here are some potential risks to consider:

• Lint issues: Combining certain materials, such as towels with regular clothes for instance, can create a large quantity of lint. And while this may appear simply annoying, too much lint built up is both a fire hazard in your dryer area and a potential wear-and-tear risk on the dryer itself.
• Cleanliness: Combining soiled clothes with cleaner ones can lead to half-cleaning or staining due to this contact.
• Bleeding: If you combine bright colors with whites, you might deal with bleeding or color transfer risks in some situations.
• Wear-and-tear: Friction from items like zippers, buttons and even heavy fabrics can wear down both clothing and the appliances being used.

For more on separating laundry and how this might impact your washer and dryer, or to learn about any of our appliance repair services, speak to the staff at All Pro Appliance today.