Why You Should Stop Washing Towels With Clothes And Other Laundry Immediately
Laundry is laundry, right? While it's a chore that most everyone does, most of us are never thoroughly taught the proper way to do laundry by a cleaning expert, and we (usually) don't feel like the specifics matter. Though there's a general understanding of how to separate colors, and the respective temperatures you should wash them in, there isn't a ton of discussion beyond that as far as what you can and can't wash together.
Besides clothing, one of the most frequently laundered items are your towels. But to paraphrase "Jurassic Park," just because you can wash everything together doesn't mean that you should. In fact, while it may initially seem more convenient to wash your towels and clothes together, there are quite a few reasons it's a bad idea. When you wash your towels and clothes in the same load, it causes your clothes to wear out faster than if they were washed alone. This happens for a number of reasons. For one, towels are usually weightier than your clothing, which means that they can get stretched and pushed around a bit more than if they were washed by themselves. In order to get towels properly cleaned, they also generally require hotter temperatures and more vigorous wash cycle which can prove too aggressive for some clothing: If you go with the lighter cycles and colder temps that the clothes want, though, the towels won't get fully washed.
And it's not just the washing to be concerned about, but the drying as well. Towels can take longer to dry than lighter, thinner fabrics, which means you may be over-drying your clothes. This leads to them breaking down and fading faster.
To get the most out of your laundry, here's how to wash and dry your towels — and what you can comfortably throw in with them.
That's without getting into the fact that towels, especially new ones, often leave behind some lint and fuzz on your clothes. That's the last thing you want.
When it comes down to it, the best course of action when it comes to washing towels is to let them have their alone time in the washer and dryer. Not only do you want to keep your towels separate from other types of linens and clothing, but you may also want to wash them in separate categories. Besides separating by color, you should separate your towels based on use. You wouldn't want to wipe your face on your toilet, or dry your hair with the wet-dog towel, so you probably don't want to wash them together either. It's best to have three separate categories — hand and body towels, kitchen towels, and cleaning-specific "dirty'" towels. This prevents cross-contamination.
If you're in a pinch and need to do an all-inclusive load of laundry... hey, everything in moderation. Though you don't want to make a habit of it, doing a miscellaneous load from time to time won't instantly ruin your clothes or towels. Regardless, if you are trying to cut down on loads, at least make sure that you are still separating your laundry by color, and ideally by fabric type.