When it comes to doing laundry, there are many rules to follow — yet one of the most important ones is what you set your water temperature to when doing a wash.
One expert said the hot and cold settings are the two best options — and discourages washing in warm water.
To fully kill nasty germs and any bacteria living on your clothes, Dr. Xand van Tulleken recommended on BBC Morning Live to suds up your garments in 60-degree temps — which is considered the hot setting.
“At 60 degrees, certain bugs will be killed, and that can be quite good,” he said.
“So, if you’ve got an infection around your house, particularly norovirus, put it up at 60, along with the mechanical cleaning and the detergent.”
Tulleken said the warm setting is a silly option as he doesn’t see the point of it. “…it’s too hot to be cheap, and it’s too cold to kill [germs].”
20 degrees is considered the cold water setting — which Tulleken is all for. “I’ve gotta say, I’m a 20 degrees guy for everything except my workout clothes, which go in hotter.”
Aside from protecting your delicates, washing your clothes in cool water can also save you some money.
“20 degrees saves 62% of your money compared to 40 degrees, so that is a big deal…” he explained.
Like with many appliances, washing machines should periodically be cleaned — especially if you often wash in cold water.
“If your machine has a cleaning cycle, which runs it at a high temperature, do that according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and then air it out.”
Aside from washing clothes at the wrong temperature — other common laundry mistakes most people make are putting too much detergent.
“If you add too much to the appliance, it will often require additional time to spin and drain away any excess water and detergent residue,” appliance repair expert Ian Palmer-Smith told the Daily Mail.
Overcrowding your machine so that it becomes unbalanced is another one.
“With washing machines becoming more sophisticated, they are able to detect if the load is unbalanced. If it is, this can often result in additional minutes being added,” the expert explained.
“This is a really easy mistake to avoid by distributing your laundry evenly in the drum,” Palmer-Smith continued.
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