Today is laundry day!
Washing, hanging, drying, folding, ironing and putting away. An endless and eternally hated cycle of work that was traditionally left to slaves, immigrants or the poor. Until the 19th century, the labor was not even worse because the materials used to make most clothes were not washable in water, such as wool, felt and leather. Only undergarments and underskirts were made of linen and could be washed in water. However, even these garments were washed less frequently than they are today. It wasn't until cotton fabric began to be used to make clothes that washing entered the hellish cycle of today: worn, washed.
Most domestic activities have progressed much more than washing clothes. In fact, this task has hardly evolved since the invention of the washing machine. The fabrics used to make clothes, however, have changed a lot in recent years: today there are fabrics that allow the skin to breathe, scented fabrics, metallized, synthetic and bactericidal fabrics and excellent quality dyes that fade less in the wash. However, they are still focused on stain removal and cotton clothes. And therein lies the problem.
Yes, the problem lies in the fact that the soaps available on the market are not efficient for cleaning most of our clothes, which are made from synthetic or mixed fiber fabrics. What's more, most people don't know exactly how much soap to use when washing, when to use fabric softener and how to wash sportswear.
When it comes to the amount of soap you should put in the washing machine, more soap does not mean cleaner clothes. On the contrary. When there is too much soap in the water, it prevents dirt from coming out of the fiber, causing bacteria to accumulate from one wash to the next. Dr. Grant, from the American washing service Oxwash, says that the amount of liquid soap should vary between 1 and 2 tablespoons per wash. The biggest problem is that the cause of bad-smelling clothes is often not visible to the naked eye: sweat, salts, accumulations of epithelial cells and skin fat. So clothes can be stain-free but not clean. The use of highly perfumed soaps and fabric softeners disguises the bad smell, but this can end up being worse, as the problem becomes accumulative.
In fact, fabric softener is another chapter in this soap opera. Its use results in the formation of a film that covers the fiber, making it less absorbent. This creates a problem, especially when washing gym clothes, underwear and cotton towels. But isn't fabric softener supposed to make towels fluffier? That's right: they become fluffier, but less drying. What's more, fabric softener forms a residue that adheres to hard-to-reach parts inside the washing machine, which is eventually released during the rinse, sticking to the clean clothes. But the worst case is undoubtedly the use of fabric softener in gym clothes, as it adheres to the synthetic fibers preventing them from performing those expensive functions you paid a fortune for, such as allowing the sweat from your skin to pass through the fabric to its surface and then evaporate, keeping you cool and dry.
Gym clothes, precisely because they are made from more expensive fabrics, require greater care and should not be washed together with other clothes. You may have noticed that often after washing they still smell bad. This is a sign that they haven't been properly cleaned and that the situation will only get worse when they are worn again. Ideally, they should be washed with soaps with a density closer to that of water, so that the residue is removed more effectively, and no fabric softeners or bleaches that attack the synthetic fiber (such as Q-boa, for example) should be used. In the American market there are a number of products suitable for washing this type of clothing, but in Brazil the situation is quite different. I did a quick search on the internet and discovered that the few products available are very expensive.
Finally, laundry experts suggest that the days when white clothes had to be washed separately from colored clothes are over. Especially in the case of washing synthetic clothes, where the dyes used are of better quality and their colors hardly fade.
So, if today is your laundry day, I can only tell you one thing: "Bon Courage". Saying it like that, in French, even makes you more excited about the task, doesn't it?
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Voltar