How to do your laundry – Part Two

 

Part One is available here

After your clothes are washed it’s time to dry them.  I’m going to assume that you will be drying them with a clothes dryer.  If you don’t have access to one you can dry your clothes on a clothes line.

It will take longer and you’ll have more wrinkles, but air drying will do the job.

The most important piece of advice to remember when using a dryer is to keep the lint trap clean. Lint is very flammable.  Not cleaning the lint on a regular basis is a fire hazard.

Take a minute to find the lint trap on your machine.  Remove the trap.

Clean the trap by removing the lint.

To make sure you clean it completely, use the hand held attachment on your vacuum to remove all lint.

At this point you’re probably thinking, “I thought this post was about drying clothes, not dryer upkeep.”  You’re right of course, but this safety message is important.  According to the U.S. Fire Administration, thousands of fires started by dryers happen every year and I want you to be protected.

As you are putting the wet clothes into the dryer, take a minute to shake out the garment. This will help to remove some wrinkles.

You can see the difference in the shirt on the left, which is how it came out of the washer and the same shirt on the right which I shook out before putting in the dryer.

Toss in a dryer sheet, if you don’t use liquid softener in the wash, and turn on the dryer.

Refer to the machine instructions for length of drying time and temperature for your laundry.  In general I use 45 minutes and high heat for most loads.

Here is another important point. Take the laundry out of the dyer immediately when it’s done.  If you can, be standing by the machine before it goes off so that you don’t lose a minute.  As soon as the dryer turns off, take out the clothing and hang up or fold right away.

The pants on the left were in the dryer for one hour after it turned off, the same pants on the right were taken out of the dryer as soon as the buzzer sounded.  You can see the difference in the amount of wrinkles.

Fold the rest of the laundry.  You may hear lots of theories as to the best folding method, I think you should fold your laundry in whatever way works for you.

Congratulations.  You have washed and dried your own laundry!  Now go put it away in the bureau so that you can find your favorite shirt tomorrow morning.

Next time, we will cover advanced laundry care …

Ironing.