Many of us would have wondered why your clothes started to look dull
just after switching from washing clothes with hands to washing
machine!
The reason could be that we have not tuned our selves to the way washing is done by the machine!
The quality of washing depends upon 1) Quality of water 2) Quality and
quantity of detergent 3) The washing mode 4) The load ( how much clothes
you put in together) 4) The mix of type of clothes. One needs to
experiment by adjusting these in trial & error to find out how to
better the washing.
Let's see where we may miss generally! One
common point for few of these; washing machine may have invented to save
your time and reduce physical work. But definitely it is not invented
to save your expenses.
* Water type: Your water may be soft or
hard. May have more salt content. Choose a detergent that best suites
your water type and also increase/decrease qty. A good river water (soft
water) would require less detergent.
* Detergent: One of the
two major reasons for poor wash quality, in my view is, not using
adequate detergent. When you do washing with hands by soaking clothes in
a bucket or tub, you touch and feel how soapy the water is or you
observe if it created sufficient foam. (More than the foam, the
soapiness of the water below is more important). Your washing machine
may be using more water than how much you would have used in your tub
for similar quantity of clothes. Hence, you need to put more detergent
to get similar soapiness in machine. While doing your trials, open the
machine in the middle of the wash and touch and feel the water to judge
whether the quantity of detergent put was sufficient ( Oops! You can't
do this in front loading machines).
* Soaking: When you wash
clothes with hands, typically you would soak the clothes in detergent
water and leave it for minimum 30 minutes. This helps in getting good
wash due to the reasons that the detergent works on the clothe for
longer duration. In the absence of soaking in machine wash you may
require to put more detergent. Now a days, some washing machine come
with soaking facility, wherein it will automatically start the wash
after the soaking time set is completed. Use this feature if you have.
* Load: Putting in more clothes is the other major reason for poor wash
in a machine. We tend to get more benefit out of less inputs/efforts.
May be the number of clothes you want to wash is just above the
recommended volume for a full load but not sufficient for doing another
cycle of wash. For any reason, don't fill the clothes till the mouth.
For a good quality wash, there is enough room inside for easy and
effective movement of clothes. Also, the water taken inside depends on
the load measured in by the machine. If you put above the max level, it
can still take water only to the max load. Hence, with less water used,
you won't get a good wash.
I am not going to talk about
separating coloured and white clothes, not mixing jeans or blankets with
delicate clothes, not mixing the clothes that lose colour during wash
and stick that colour on other clothes, etc., which you already know!
But do we really do separate washes?
One may also experiment with hot water wash!
And what you get at the end? Clothes look as good as new ones for longer years!!
