The Dude's Guide to Laundry： How to Save Time, Money, and Your Wardrobe
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Summary
If you didn t grow up doing your own laundry, once you headed out on your own, you probably just figured things out on the fly, hoped for the best, and have been doing things the same way ever since. But while you may be getting the job done okay, you also might be making some mistakes that are costing you time, money, and cleaner clothes. In this episode, we ll cover all the things you should have learned as a young man but never did, and how to do your laundry effectively. Our guide is Patrick Richardson, aka The Laundry Evangelist, a laundry expert who runs How to do laundry camps, hosts the TV show TheLaundry Guy and is the author of LaundRY LOVE. Today on the show, Patrick shares the one cycle in water temperature you should use for all your clothes, exactly how much detergent you should be using, how often you should wash your clothes which is less often than you think, why you shouldn t ever use dryer sheets, and what to throw in your dryer instead.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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If you didn't grow up doing your own laundry, once you headed out on your own, you probably
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just figured things out on the fly, hoped for the best, and have been doing things the
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But while you may be getting the job done okay, you also might be making some mistakes
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that are costing you time, money, and cleaner clothes.
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In this episode from the Art of Manliness Department of Essential Life Skills, we'll cover all
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the things you should have learned as a young man but never did, and how to do your laundry
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Our guide is Patrick Richardson, aka The Laundry Evangelist, a laundry expert who runs how to
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do laundry camps, hosts the television show The Laundry Guy, and is the author of Laundry
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Today on the show, Patrick shares the one cycle in water temperature you should use for all
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your clothes, exactly how much detergent you should be using, which is a lot less than
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you think, how often you should wash your clothes, which is less often than you think,
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why you shouldn't ever use dryer sheets, and what to throw in your dryer instead, how
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regardless of what the tag says, you can wash anything at home, including a wool suit, how
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to easily get rid of stains, including yellow pit stains, and many more tips that will save
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you time, money, and hassle in doing your laundry.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash laundry.
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This is going to be a lot of fun because you are the laundry evangelist.
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You run a popular laundry camp where you teach people how to do laundry better.
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And you've written a book called Laundry Love, all about the ins and outs of laundry.
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So how did you become the laundry evangelist slash laundry guy?
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Well, let me give you the longest possible answer, as short as I possibly can.
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When I was two and a half years old, one of my earliest memories is handing my granny
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And I loved laundry enough by that point that I turned three in November, and that
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December, Santa brought me a toy washing machine.
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I always loved laundry, so I studied apparel and textiles in college.
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When I left the University of Kentucky, I moved to Minnesota, and I worked for Neiman Marcus
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and then for Nordstrom, and about 11, oh gosh, it was 12 years ago now.
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I opened a designer vintage store, and I carried these beautiful vintage pieces, but I knew
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they wouldn't survive if people didn't know how to take care of them.
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And from there, everybody was way more interested in the laundry product than they were the designer
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There was an article written about my love of washing everything, and everybody kept
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So I launched a laundry camp, and from there, everything else happened.
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Karen, who helped with the book, came to camp and was like, you really need to write a
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I mean, you've been doing this since you were a kid.
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You went to college, you studied textiles, you're the expert.
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And I'm hoping in this conversation, we can help make laundry better, easier, and even
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Because it's one of those chores, like, it just never stops.
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You have to do your laundry for the rest of your life.
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So let's talk about supplies and equipment first.
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What kind of washing machine do you recommend for people to get to have the best wash?
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Okay, so anymore, the technology has gotten so good, I don't have the hardcore opinion
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But top loading washing machines with no agitators, the technology's gotten so good that if you like
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I'm always going to prefer front loader because I just like the, I like the mechanism that
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But more importantly, make sure that you can control the time to get that 30-minute wash
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cycle and you do whatever you need to do to make sure that your clothes are being washed
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In my book, I say you need to wash in warm and you are hearing it here first because I
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There is a washing machine company now that is setting their cold setting with a thermometer.
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So it's actually blending in as much warm water as it needs to, to make their cold water
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So if you're going to go buy a brand new machine, if you, if you haven't bought one in the last
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But if you're going to go buy a brand new machine, that is actually now an option.
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So being able to do a short cycle and get the water to 65 degrees would be the two most
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I need you to sell me on the high efficiency washing machines because my wife and I, we've
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got the, the old school agitator washing machine that, you know, our moms had growing
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And the reason why is when we've seen the, the high efficiency washing machines in action,
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we look at it, it's like, there's not any water in there.
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And it's just kind of like, just sort of gently moving it around.
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Should we ditch the old school agitator washing machine?
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Well, the reason you should ditch the old school agitator is because the worst thing you do
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to your clothes in the laundry process is actually agitation or abrasion.
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You know, it's your clothes rubbing against themselves.
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The way the agitator cleans is it forces the clothes against each other.
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The way a high efficiency machine cleans, like let's do a front loader first, because it's
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The clothes are lifted up out of the water and they fall back into the water.
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They're lifted up out of the water and they fall back into the water.
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When that water forces through the clothes, that's the cleaning process.
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Modern top loaders have what's called a napeller and it makes your clothes move like a carousel.
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So they come out of the water, go back in the water, come out of the water, go back in
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And it really is the water that cleans your clothes.
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So the way that you force the water through the clothes is the cleaning process.
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And so new machines, because they don't have that much water, it's easier for your clothes
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to come out of the water, go back in the water.
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With an agitator, they don't come out of the water.
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If you ever look at it, it'll spin and jerk, spin and jerk.
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And when it's jerking, it's forcing the water back through the clothes, but it's also rubbing
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So it's going to put less wear and tear in your clothing and y'all say it cleans better
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But I mean, I say that Laundry Love is a sustainable book because all the practices
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in it are very sustainable, but I didn't write it from a standpoint of sustainability.
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But I don't tell people that's why they should use an HE machine.
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A few weeks ago, I think we had a load of sheets in the washing machine and somehow like
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And all of a sudden I heard this, this, and then I walked in the laundry room and our
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washing machine was literally walking across the floor because this ball was just beating
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So we might have to think about getting the front loader.
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And I think one of the things too, you can stack those things if you want, right?
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You can get two on top of each other and do two loads if you want.
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I, if I had, you know, the laundry room of my dreams, which I don't, but if I did, I
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I'd do two washers, two dryers because you could do them in the same footprint.
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Well, you mentioned washing machine technology.
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Like you don't have a really strong opinion on things these days because technology has
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Like so that you don't have much of an opinion on whether you get this one or that
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Well, I mean, they've just, they've gotten so good.
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Like every manufacturer has tested the machine and they've gotten so good at water efficiency.
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I mean, almost every machine now has a computer in it, which, I mean, gives you all sorts of
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It controls the water temperature, it controls how much water it can sense.
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But just even the basic technology, if you buy the most basic, you know, HE machine,
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the technology is better than the most high end HE machine when they first launched in
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the nineties, because we've just figured out like how to move the clothes.
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And the real key to getting your clothes clean is moving the clothes.
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You know, in the seventies, the machines of the seventies, we didn't know, like if we put
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fins in the bottom of the machine, it'll move the clothes up and down.
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You know, all we knew is turn and jerk and to fill it up with water and add a bunch of
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You know, now we know like we can speed up the spin cycle.
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We have the ability to speed up the spin cycle.
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First of all, you know, cause the motors are so much more powerful.
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So more water spins out of the clothes, which means less time in the dryer.
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You know, my washing machine, if you do a warm wash, it actually cools before it does
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the rinse, you know, which is something that just didn't exist 10 years ago, you know, and
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now you can like add steam if you want that extra little cleaning boost, just the technology
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of, of just regular washing machines has gotten so fantastic.
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I mean, I'm not talking about, you know, machines that are nine or $10,000.
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I'm talking about what you would go into, you know, when you go to an appliance store and
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you go in and you buy a washing machine, these are just, that's what I'm talking about.
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It's just, we have sensor dry, we have high speed spin, they can take more weight.
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You know, the washing machines in the seventies, you can only do about 15 pounds worth of clothes.
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Now you can easily do 30, you know, we've just, we just understand technology in general.
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So washing machine, the high efficiency washing machine, that's the way to go.
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Less wear and tear, uses less water, just does a great job of getting your clothes clean.
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Well, my favorite is soap, but that's kind of rare.
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Their difference is the way they're manufactured.
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Soap is a base plus an acid and it creates, it saponifies, it creates soap.
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Detergent is cleaning ingredients that are mixed together.
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I prefer soap because it rinses cleaner, but if you're just going to buy detergent at the
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Look for something that's plant-based, but what matters the most is only use about two tablespoons
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Because it isn't the detergent that cleans your clothes, it's the water.
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It lowers the viscosity of water, which is a fancy way of saying it softens the water.
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But the big thing is there's a surfactant in soap and or detergent.
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And surfactant means it floats on the surface of the water.
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It gets trapped in the surfactant and it goes down the drain.
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If you're using too much detergent, the dirt comes out of the clothes.
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It gets trapped in the surfactant, but it can't rinse away.
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So the only place it has to go is to resettle back into your clothes.
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That's how we end up with like crunchy towels or dingy white, or sometimes things have this
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kind of musty odor when they come out of the washer.
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That's all because the detergent is still there.
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That's interesting because when you look at the instructions for detergent on the big
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brand detergents, you're putting a lot in there.
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The best way I can explain that is, you know, I sell, I have a store in the Mall of America
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If there's some way that I could convince you that you needed a pound of soap for every
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load of laundry and you do it, I would be rich.
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Your clothes would be filthy, but I would be rich.
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I know a lot of people use that for the convenience factor.
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They're easy, but there's enough detergent in one pod to do five loads of laundry.
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I am not really a fan because I like to be able to control how much because, you know,
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you talked about you and your wife washing the sheets.
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But what if you just threw in, you know, like you were out gardening and you both had, you
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know, shorts and a t-shirt, but it was dirty and you wanted to wash it.
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And the thing with pods is you just can't control that.
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I mean, you can get it in like co-ops or Whole Foods.
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What's great is I'm starting to see it pop up in grocery stores.
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Occasionally, it'll be powder, but it's most often flakes.
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Like there are people who shave it and use it as laundry soap.
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Not a big fan because it's actually formulated for stain removal.
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Besides the laundry soap, any other supplies you recommend having on hand so you can get
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Well, spray bottle of vinegar and water for sure because that is my go-to stain remover.
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If I have a stain on a shirt, I'm always going to spray it with vinegar and water.
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And then your bar of laundry soap you just asked about and a horsehair brush because if
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you wet the brush and you run it across the bar and build lather up in the brush and attack
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And the reason you do it that way is because if you use the bar and you wet it, you're actually
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If you use the bristles of the brush, the bristles like, it's like brushing your teeth.
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You know, it sort of lifts everything up and gets it out of the fabric.
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I think it's interesting, the vinegar and water mixture, that's your go-to stain removal.
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So you're not using like the shout or things like that to get rid of stains?
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I mean, I use, for my laundry, I use an oily soap, which you could use liquid hand soap.
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People use dish soap and that's a, here's my issue with dish soap.
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The technology, you know, the number one brand of dish soap, the technology has gotten so
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They have put it in a spray bottle and you can literally spray it on a pan and wipe it
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The way they did that is they made it really, really acidic, which is great because it does
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The thing is, if you were to do it on a black t-shirt and you sprayed that on, it's so acidic,
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you'll get the stain out, but it'll look like it left a mark.
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So I use liquid hand soap, which same thickness, because that's what I want, but without that
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So liquid hand soap, stain brush, stain brush, vinegar and water, and then occasionally oxygen
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And that's, that is literally everything I use for the laundry.
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Yeah, that'd be a, that's the most common brand.
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The reason I love oxygen bleach, it'll take out red wine, it'll take out blueberries, it'll
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But the big thing is if you have polar fleece or you have active wear and you wear it and
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when you're, when you wash it, you put it back on, it smells terrible.
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That's because it's hydrophobic and oleophilic.
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So it loves the oil from your skin and the bacteria in the oil in your skin and the water
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So it'll actually break that sweat down and wash it out of the fabric.
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I hope we can talk more about that, getting your active wear clean.
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Cause I know a lot of people have that problem.
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And we'll talk more about how you use those supplies.
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You mentioned the liquid hand soap, you know, what you call the oily soap, brush, vinegar
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and oxygen bleach when we talk about stain removal.
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But now that we have our supplies on hand, let's talk about washing our clothes.
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And you recommend that we should probably wash our clothes less often than we think.
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So how often do we actually need to wash our clothes?
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Well, like my jeans, I have a pair of jeans on right now while I'm talking to you.
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I don't really know because I don't wear them every day.
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I mean, I don't wear them back to back, but I think you should wear your jeans nine or
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I try to wear my shirts two or three times unless like if I get a spot, I spot treat it.
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But, you know, if I get sweaty or whatever, then I'm going to wash it.
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You know, we don't have to wash them every time.
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And the washing leads to abrasion, which causes them to break down.
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So I prefer, you know, I mean, boxers and socks, we're going to wash those every single
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But your shirts, your jeans, that kind of stuff, you just don't really have to wash it
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I mean, what kind of, what do you do in between washes?
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You can, if you need to air it out, that's great.
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I always, you know, I mean, I hang everything just because I don't have much drawer space
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But like if you needed to fold the jeans up, I'd let them air out a few hours to make sure
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And if you put them back on the hanger when they're still warm, like, you know, if you take
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your shirt off and immediately put it back on the hanger, usually the wrinkles just fall
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Something that we do in our household is we have like a half Z pile.
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So it's like, we have like a rack in the closet where you put things on there where, you know,
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It might not be dirty, but it's not ready to be washed yet.
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And then you can always just pull it off whenever you're ready to wash it.
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Do you know, there's a trend for that and it's called the laundry chair.
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It's people who have a chair in their bedroom and they take something off and throw it on
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Isn't there like a butler chair that people used to have in their closet where they'd hang
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So you don't need to wash your clothes as often as you think.
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Underwear, socks, you know, wash that stuff all the time.
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But other stuff, you don't need to wash as much.
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You know, like the jeans I'm wearing right now, I think it's been a month or two since
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And I guess one downside of washing your jeans a lot is that it can reduce some of the,
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We generally want that out of denim because we have the ability to set the dye so they
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But most people like them to fade as they wash them.
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If you don't like them to fade, you actually can soak them in really hot water with a fourth
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a cup of salt and you'll set the color forever.
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So you do that once you get like a new pair of jeans, you just soak it in salt?
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Or even if you, you bought this pair of jeans a couple months ago and you just washed them
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Let's say you wash them two or three times and you love the way they look at that exact
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Something I've been playing around with too lately was the Levi's shrink to fit jeans.
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So that's cool because you get to a point with those jeans where like, they look like
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I'll tell you something really funny about shrink to fit jeans.
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Because this also was back, and it's totally unrelated to this conversation, but it's funny.
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When I was in college, I was in a store that was doing, that's when shrink to fit was,
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And if you bought a pair, you could climb into a hot tub with them and shrink them to
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And you just took your socks and shoes off and climbed in.
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And then you got out and you stood basically on this, it was kind of a big rack.
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I don't know, until enough water dripped off and then it was really hot outside.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:21:51.460
The very first rule that you talk about of laundry in your book is don't let your clothes
00:22:00.280
And basically what you're telling people is just ignore the laundry care tag, which when
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Like my mother told me, like, you always read the tag.
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Like, you know, I'm wearing a cotton dress shirt right now.
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And it's just a cotton shirt, but the tag says dry clean only.
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The one that always gets me is dry clean only for cashmere sweaters.
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Cashmere goats are these smelly goats that live on the side of a mountain.
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And they just run around as, you know, smelly goats.
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The reason that it says dry clean only is because people don't know how to do laundry.
00:23:00.480
So, you know, if you treat a cashmere sweater like you treat a cotton towel, no, you can't
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wash it the same way, but you can still wash it.
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The other thing that's really interesting is if you buy a sweater in the United States
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and you buy the same sweater in Europe, it will have different care instructions because
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So something in the U.S. that says dry clean only in Europe, it will have washing instructions.
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So you make the case, you can wash every bit of clothing you own at home.
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I haven't been to the dry cleaner in at least 16 years.
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Can I wash one of my wool suits at home if I wanted to?
00:23:43.840
I just, in fact, I just washed a wool suit last week.
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I mean, you can't just throw them in the washer like anything.
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You have to put them in a mesh bag really tight so they don't move around.
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When they're dry, you hang them up, let them dry and steam them out.
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And it doesn't harm the lining, like the silk lining you might have or whatever?
00:24:04.040
No, I mean, it's because dry cleaning isn't really a dry process.
00:24:16.660
The reason dry cleaning ever came into being was because when we first started doing dry
00:24:21.820
cleaning in like the 30s, when it became a thing, silk, at the time, silk is the second
00:24:28.100
And at the time, we didn't have the ability to dye silk permanently.
00:24:35.380
And so if you got it in water, the water would dissolve the salt.
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What they found was petroleum wouldn't dissolve the salt.
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So dry cleaning became a thing because of silk.
00:24:47.520
And you make the point in the book that this idea that you have to dry clean wool or even
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It's kind of silly because wool suits existed before dry cleaning existed.
00:25:01.100
They changed clothes more than a four-year-old and they didn't have dry cleaners.
00:25:08.640
And we know that the clothes survived because we still see them.
00:25:12.820
You know, I mean, it's not uncommon to go to a museum and see like a Civil War uniform
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And that stuff didn't, there was no dry cleaning.
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For certain things, you got to do it differently.
00:25:36.180
Do you recommend people sorting their clothes before washing?
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The best way to sort is white as a load, black as a load, the cool colors.
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So blue, green, and purple with gray, the hot colors, red, orange, and yellow with brown.
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And then if you wear performance wear like Athleta, Lululemon, Under Armour, you know, those,
00:26:03.980
So you don't have to separate your white towels from your white t-shirts, from your white dress shirts, from your white sheets.
00:26:10.900
They can all go in the washing machine together.
00:26:13.020
Why do you sort the laundry based on these colors?
00:26:38.680
So you're sorting colors because you want the clothes in a load to be the same weight.
00:26:42.780
You don't want to mix them together to have heavier clothes, a braiding lighter weight clothes in a load.
00:26:48.620
So it's not for the reason I think, you know, I think people in the past, you know, you were told in the past,
00:26:53.620
the reason why you sort is because you want to avoid dark stuff mucking up your white stuff.
00:26:59.720
And it originally happened because of the ringer washer.
00:27:10.740
So, you know, there's an episode of the Brady Bunch, I think, where Bobby does a load of laundry and he throws in a red sock and everything in the load turns pink.
00:27:23.080
If you did that right now, it probably wouldn't happen.
00:27:29.800
Yeah, it's just the quality of the dye is so much better.
00:27:34.980
So whites together, blacks together, cool colors together, hot color, warm colors together, and then you want your athletic wear separate.
00:27:45.020
Are we going to wash these clothes any different from each other?
00:27:48.500
Because you usually think you have to sort your whites because you're going to wash that on hot, but you're dark, you're going to wash on cool.
00:27:53.760
We're going to wash everything on warm, and we're going to wash everything on the express cycle.
00:27:58.780
So the 30-minute wash cycle and warm water across the board.
00:28:03.100
Now, I just said earlier, you know, I have been schooled in the last two days because there is now a machine where you can wash on cold.
00:28:11.020
As long as your water is 65 degrees or warmer, I don't care what you call the cycle.
00:28:22.640
So I never was able to use cold because I never had a machine that would bring the temperature up to 65.
00:28:35.700
I just want the water to be 65 degrees or warmer.
00:28:38.720
And that 65-degree mark, is that when the detergent actually starts doing what it's supposed to be doing?
00:28:48.480
Because the cotton, like your cotton towels, for example, they can totally take the hot water, but they're sewn with polyester thread.
00:29:00.840
That's the reason, like, your towels, the edges look like bacon because the water was too hot in the washer or the dryer was too hot and the polyester thread shrank.
00:29:10.020
So warm is warm enough to get everything clean without doing any damage.
00:29:15.440
And you said the cycle, you just want that express cycle.
00:29:18.080
Like, a lot of washing machines that come with those different, like, things that are, like, permanent press is one of them, I think, or whatever.
00:29:29.180
Yeah, the express cycle, if you don't have an express cycle, by the way, use permanent press.
00:29:37.360
Because once you bring the temperature up, you know, you bring the water to temperature and you add the detergent, it really only takes about two minutes for your clothes to come clean with a little bit of agitation.
00:29:49.640
So when your clothes wash for eight minutes in a 30-minute cycle, that's more than long enough for them to come clean.
00:29:56.520
And if you wash longer, you're just wearing your clothes down more.
00:30:01.440
And you can do this to all your clothes, your whites, your jeans, your dark colors, your red.
00:30:10.520
Even, like, a wool sweater, a cashmere sweater, do the same thing?
00:30:13.920
As long as you put it in a mesh bag, you know, easy.
00:30:19.200
Well, speaking of cold water washing, I've seen detergents that are like, this is designed for cold water washing.
00:30:29.560
If you read the fine print, they say that they think cold water is 65 degrees.
00:30:35.560
Because the industry thinks cold is 65 degrees.
00:30:38.740
The industry thinks warm water doesn't come until about 80 degrees.
00:30:42.820
So, the industry thinks if cold is 65, it's just municipal water.
00:30:48.080
You know, in Duluth, Minnesota, in the winter, municipal water is 41 degrees.
00:30:54.880
And I think in the book, you talked about when you wash in cold water, like, let's say you're in Duluth, Minnesota, you wash in cold water, even with a cold water-designed detergent, because it's not warm enough to start activating, all that's happening is that detergent is just staying in your clothes.
00:31:11.540
And, you know, it's easy to test, because if you're a cold water washer, flip your water to your cycle to warm, put something you've washed, so something that, you know, is quote-unquote clean, back in the machine, don't do anything else.
00:31:25.680
Just turn it on warm water, and it's going to suds, because all that detergent is going to activate.
00:31:31.220
Because it didn't get activated the first time you washed it.
00:31:41.200
And if the load gets smaller, you need to start cutting it down.
00:31:44.160
Is a full load, like, it's all the way to the top?
00:31:49.500
Usually, with a top loader, it's somewhere between 70% and 75% full.
00:31:55.860
And with a front loader, it's usually up to about 80% full.
00:32:00.920
So, you're going to wash your clothes on warm and on the express cycle, which takes only 30 minutes, for all your stuff.
00:32:10.900
You don't have to think about things too much anymore.
00:32:22.420
The reason you shouldn't bleach white is because the color that you're thinking of is white.
00:32:38.500
To get what we think of as white, we use a blue dye.
00:32:42.260
It's called an optical whitener or an optical brightener, but it's a blue dye.
00:32:46.520
And so, we dye the white white to get it that bright white color.
00:32:51.880
When you use bleach, we know that bleach lifts color.
00:32:56.320
That's why we don't put bleach in black, for example.
00:32:59.300
Because if you bleach black, it comes out kind of spotty gray.
00:33:05.580
It just takes three or four times of doing it before our eyes can perceive the difference in color.
00:33:12.340
But once it happens, then your white looks dingy and, you know, there's no repairing it.
00:33:18.080
Yeah, I remember I experienced that when I was on my own for the first time and I had to wash some white dress shirts.
00:33:25.180
And I don't think I actually filled up the washing machine with water first before I put the bleach.
00:33:29.500
I just put the bleach right on my shirts and then I pulled them out.
00:33:42.280
And I think you have been talking about like, we're not even using bleach to disinfect stuff anymore.
00:33:51.280
I mean, at home, if you need things to be sanitary, just add vinegar.
00:33:59.000
Yeah, it's kind of an amazing thing, really, vinegar.
00:34:01.740
I've been using vinegar on my glass shower door.
00:34:07.940
And I've always had problems with the soap scum or just like the water stains.
00:34:12.040
And I'd buy the really expensive, really smelly, doesn't it?
00:34:20.560
And then I just started using vinegar and water.
00:34:33.300
Okay, so for most stuff, you can just throw it in the laundry, the washing machine.
00:34:39.340
With certain items that are a little more delicate, you want to get these mesh bags.
00:34:43.860
So what are you going to put in these mesh bags?
00:34:47.660
Anything wool or anything silk is the easiest way to think about it.
00:34:55.560
If you do it, the jacket goes in one bag and the pants go in another.
00:34:59.840
And you said they have to be packed pretty tight.
00:35:03.940
So if your bag is too big, just push it to the bottom of the bag and then roll the bag around it and put a rubber band around it.
00:35:10.060
You want it to be like a sausage when you wash it.
00:35:18.680
The whole point is for it to not move inside that bag.
00:35:22.120
And then when you dry sweaters or a suit, you're not going to put these in the dryer, right?
00:35:27.900
Anything that goes in a mesh bag never goes in the dryer.
00:35:31.300
When you dry sweaters, something that we do is we lay them out flat on the ground on a towel.
00:35:39.740
But the other thing you can do is you can lay them across a drying rack.
00:35:43.940
You don't want to hang sweaters up when they're wet because you'll get those hanger ears.
00:35:49.260
So you can't hang them on the dryer rack to save space if you needed to do that.
00:35:53.960
Because you kind of, when you lay them on the drying rack, you lay them kind of, you know, you're folding kind of across the middle.
00:36:05.680
So we just save people some dry cleaning bills.
00:36:07.660
You can wash your wool sweaters, your suits at home.
00:36:14.620
Besides those items of clothing, which we're going to allow to air dry, with the clothing you are throwing into the dryer or the textiles you are throwing in the dryer, this can include sheets and towels.
00:36:27.260
Dryer sheets is the first one because you should never use those.
00:36:30.960
And then the other thing is, is like people will turn the dryer on for two hours.
00:36:34.760
You know, their clothes are dry in 30 minutes and then they just tumble in hot, dry heat.
00:36:41.000
I mean, you're just breaking them down right in front of you.
00:36:48.200
So fabric, softener, and dryer sheets, they coat the fabric.
00:36:54.700
The first time you use fabric, softener, or dryer sheets on your towels, you reduce their absorbency by like 80%.
00:37:01.280
It makes it harder to get stains out because stains get sort of trapped under this coating.
00:37:10.820
Like I'm thinking of like golf shirts or linen in the summer.
00:37:13.920
If you use fabric softener on them, they can't breathe.
00:37:18.220
So that's probably the worst thing you do to your clothes is fabric softener and dryer sheets.
00:37:22.700
And so for the setting on the dryer, what are you going to put that at?
00:37:26.780
I put it on warm and then I always do it by time.
00:37:30.960
Like I know that towels and sheets will dry in my dryer in 30 minutes.
00:37:40.220
We use those, but I'm wondering, what do they actually do?
00:37:42.320
They actually speed up your drying time because they speed up the center or they maintain the centrifugal force of the dryer.
00:37:49.600
So they keep the clothes tumbling so that they don't knot up like your sheets did in the washing machine.
00:37:56.000
And since it's tumbling and kind of loose, it's just drying faster.
00:38:05.200
I've seen these things that kind of look like porcupines.
00:38:13.040
Some people prefer those, you know, whichever one you like.
00:38:21.100
I feel like they soften clothes a little and maybe slightly reduce static.
00:38:27.600
But, you know, the greatest thing in the world to reduce static is a ball of aluminum foil.
00:38:32.320
You take a one-yard piece of aluminum foil and make a ball a little bit bigger than a softball.
00:38:39.200
It will remove static better than anything you've ever used.
00:38:44.760
When it gets to the size of a walnut, you just throw it in recycling and make a new one.
00:38:49.080
But you will be amazed at how great it is on static.
00:38:53.780
No more dryer sheets, no more fabric softeners then.
00:38:57.820
I'm not a big fan of the smell when you're, like, walking in your neighborhood and you can tell someone's using a dryer sheet.
00:39:05.540
Because you go outside to breathe the outdoors and then you end up breathing in chemicals.
00:39:09.560
Well, speaking of, people use fabric softener because, you know, some people like that smell, that downy fresh, right?
00:39:16.440
Any tips for people who want to make their clothes smell nice but not use fabric softener?
00:39:25.120
You can put a few drops of essential oils on your wool ball and it will scent your clothes in the dryer without staining anything.
00:39:32.720
If you love that, like, fresh, sort of linen-y, outdoorsy kind of smell, try lemongrass or bergamot.
00:39:45.960
And what's great is then you can pick whatever you want.
00:39:48.400
You know, you're not relying on, like, river rain or something.
00:39:52.700
But, you know, the essential oils are also completely safe.
00:39:56.620
I will – I'm going to throw out a caveat here, though, which I always do.
00:39:59.720
If you're going to start using essential oils for your laundry, you need to do your own research as far as babies and pets.
00:40:09.200
I guess there's, like, you have an allergic reaction.
00:40:11.420
Some essential oils are not pet safe and some essential oils make babies grumpy.
00:40:21.760
If you wash their clothes, you want them to take a nap.
00:40:27.840
I think – I was thinking that the essential oils tip, I think it would be really nice to, like, have sandalwood, like, sandalwood-smelling clothes.
00:40:37.980
I mean, the thing is you can play around with them, you know, like – I mean, depending on how far you wanted to go.
00:40:43.540
I mean, if you wanted to, like, do your active wear or something, you know, you could do, like, something citrusy because it would keep you very alert.
00:40:55.740
Usually I'm like, oh, essential oils, that's kind of weird.
00:40:57.520
But I like the essential oils for making your clothes smell nice.
00:41:00.460
Speaking of athletic wear, I want to get back to more detail on this.
00:41:03.700
Why is it so hard to get the stink out of athletic wear?
00:41:18.080
But we've never been able to get over this oleophilic-hydrophobic thing.
00:41:27.600
And your sweat under your arms, between your legs and behind your knees, is oilier than any other sweat on your body.
00:41:39.000
It's just holding that oil and the sweat's in it.
00:41:40.740
So that's the reason we kind of held the active wear off because we're going to throw oxygen bleach in with it.
00:41:45.300
And the oxygen bleach is just going to break that oil down.
00:41:48.420
I mean, the very first time you do it, it's usually gone.
00:41:52.440
If, you know, they're biking shorts and you've had them for several years, you may have to wash them a couple of times before all the sweat's gone.
00:42:00.920
But you'll notice a huge difference the very first time you do it.
00:42:04.940
Do you need to pre-soak the shirts or the clothing?
00:42:07.780
You can just toss it in the washer with the, you know, just put the oxygen bleach in with the shirt and you're good to go.
00:42:14.620
Like, are you going to use high heat or anything like that?
00:42:17.580
I mean, I usually, like that stuff, I usually hang it all up.
00:42:22.280
But, you know, yeah, once you do the oxygen bleach, I mean, you're golden.
00:42:30.200
How do you get rid of the most common stains you see?
00:42:32.800
So, you know, like red wine, coffee, spaghetti sauce.
00:42:37.280
So, usually, okay, you kind of mentioned, it's funny, everything you ask uses one thing.
00:42:46.860
If there's color and there's oil, spray it with vinegar and water, blot it, and then scrub it with soap and a brush.
00:42:53.400
The reason you do it in that order is because the oil keeps you from being able to get at the color with the brush or with the horsehair brush.
00:43:01.260
So, when you take the vinegar, you spray it with vinegar, it actually breaks down the surface tension of the stain.
00:43:07.000
So, then you can scrub that color out because you've already gotten rid of the oil.
00:43:11.660
The reason people have trouble with those stains is because they don't use the vinegar first.
00:43:18.240
If you use the vinegar first, it'll come right out.
00:43:22.160
I loved your advice about getting rid of stains.
00:43:25.740
You're like, yeah, we can take care of pretty much anything.
00:43:31.580
Some kid, like permanent marker, sharpie marker, just drew all over the dress.
00:43:45.140
We were – and it's funny because, as I told you, I have a store.
00:43:50.940
And I was trying to get one of my employees to come in so I could get over to her.
00:43:54.300
We were actually at the point where we were thinking about getting one of her bridesmaids to come work in my store so that I could get to the wedding to get the sharpie out of the dress.
00:44:06.860
And it was somebody who used to work for me, and I was like, I need you to stay here 20 minutes.
00:44:13.560
What's so great about anything is once you know you can remove a stain, you can wear anything you want.
00:44:19.020
You know, you can wear your tuxedo jacket with jeans and a t-shirt to a Taylor Swift concert if you want to.
00:44:23.920
You know, you can wear your cashmere sweater fly fishing.
00:44:28.000
Because once you can get it out, once you can get it clean, you can wear it when you want to wear it.
00:44:33.680
Yeah, you don't have to be so precious with your clothes.
00:44:38.700
I know a lot of guys listening might have experienced this with white dress shirts, the yellow armpit stain.
00:44:50.860
So, the reason it's so hard to get out is because it throws the pH of the shirt off so far that the detergent just can't do it.
00:45:01.440
I'm going to tell you a two-part trick to this because there's a trick and then a hack.
00:45:05.880
The trick to get it out is take your oily hand soap or your oily laundry soap, put it on there.
00:45:12.460
Sprinkle oxygen bleach over the top of it, rub it in, and let it sit.
00:45:19.900
Turn the hot water, the tap, all the way to hot and put it under there.
00:45:28.640
If it's really, really bad, you may have to do it twice.
00:45:35.600
Once you get that stain out or you're starting with a new shirt, if every single time, immediately, before you start the washer.
00:45:44.840
So, you're getting ready to wash your white dress shirts.
00:45:48.120
If you spray the pits or the collar, that's where the other people get it, where some people get it.
00:45:52.240
Or the cuffs with vinegar and water and throw it in the washer.
00:45:56.200
And the vinegar still has to be wet when the washer starts.
00:46:04.780
Because it actually, what it does is the stain is basic.
00:46:09.700
It brings the pH back close enough to neutral that your soap or your detergent can wash it out.
00:46:15.480
Is the stain, is that just a mixture of sweat and the deodorant?
00:46:23.180
You know, the deodorant is there, which actually makes it a little harder because it's sort of waxy.
00:46:28.740
But it's really the sweat and the fabric that cause that yellowing.
00:46:33.660
I mean, there's a lot of great stuff in here for make your laundry better.
00:46:37.740
Where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:46:40.140
The easiest place is go to laundryevangelist.com because you can watch my YouTube videos.
00:46:45.860
I do a live every Thursday on YouTube where I answer questions.
00:46:51.060
You can see, you know, places I've been featured.
00:46:53.380
So, if you want to see TV or, you know, the Wall Street Journal, whatever, you can see those.
00:46:58.860
And you can actually, you know, you can see the products.
00:47:01.340
But you can actually even submit a question and then I answer them on live.
00:47:05.300
So, you know, if you have a question that you didn't get today, you can ask it and then I answer them every Thursday.
00:47:12.260
Well, Patrick Richardson, thanks for your time.
00:47:23.720
You can learn more information about his work at his website, laundryevangelist.com.
00:47:27.160
Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash laundry, where you can find links to resources and delve deeper into this topic.
00:47:35.080
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:47:42.460
The Art of Manliness podcast hosts guests from a wide range of fields, so you can improve each and every area of your life.
00:47:48.140
One week, we could be discussing the philosophy of physical fitness, another, the art of laundry.
00:47:52.860
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00:47:58.800
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00:48:01.420
As always, thank you for the continued support.
00:48:03.380
And until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to not listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.