When Covid-19 sent the world home for two weeks, little did we know that we'd be home for months or that we'd spend so much of that time trying to reinvent the wheel. From learning new recipes to renovating our homes to trying to speed up household chores, many of us found ourselves with entirely too much time on our hands. Now that we're starting to see a light at the tunnel, we thought we'd review some of the latest "laundry hacks" we've seen over the past year or so. While some of them are interesting, we've found that most of them should be overlooked. Read on to discover 5 laundry hacks you should stop following right away!
Laundry Hacks You Should Stop Following #1: Using Hairspray to Remove Ink
We most recently saw this "hack" on TikTok, but the idea of using hairspray to remove ink from your clothes started a long time ago. In fact, in the 1950s it was actually a pretty sound approach considering that alcohol was one of the biggest ingredients in hairspray; so, essentially the tip was suggesting that by using alcohol, you could remove ink stains from your clothes. But why not just do that? Dab some rubbing alcohol on the stain and press on!
Unfortunately, today's hairspray is quite different from that used in the 1950s. In fact, many hairspray formulas don't use alcohol at all and can even cause stains by spraying them directly on your clothes rather than remove stains. We can revisit removing ink and hairspray stains in a future post, but for now - let's just stop following this "trend."
#2 Treating Stains from the Front?
On the topic of treating stains, another laundry hack you should stop following is this idea that you can simply rub a stain out from the front of the item. For novices, it's often tempting to slap some stain treatment onto the stain and scrub away. However, the more effective approach is to turn your garment inside out and treat the stain from behind. Essentially this approach pushes the stain out of the fabric rather than pushing it deeper. Not that you'll never get stains out from the front, but we'd prefer to save you a little time and effort if we can.
Laundry Hacks You Should Stop Following #3: Adding Coffee to the Rinse Cycle
Wait what? Apparently, if you add a cup of black coffee to your rinse cycle, you can prevent your black pants or jeans from fading. While we kind of like the concept of this laundry hack (and coffee can be used to color fabric), realistically one cup of coffee isn't going to make much of a difference or prevent fading.
But, since we know this is a valid concern, we'll revisit how you can keep your black clothes from fading in a future piece.
#4 Just Use More Detergent - NOT!
While more can be MORE, using more laundry detergent in an attempt to having cleaner laundry isn't the right idea. In fact, using too much laundry detergent can create excessive suds which will actually redeposit soil composites on our clothes, leaving your clothes even dirtier than when you started. You may have even noticed a smell coming from your machine that indicates you've been using too much detergent and your machine may have some buildup.
There's a reason that liquid or powder detergent has a measuring cup, but it's possible that you can't see it; so, here's a laundry hack worth saving! Use a permanent marker to redraw the lines on your detergent measuring cup. This will better enable you to pour the correct amount of detergent for the load you're washing, save you money (because you won't be using so much) and make sure that your laundry comes out clean and fresh! You could even use half the amount of detergent necessary and be fine (especially on these new high-efficiency machines).
Laundry Hacks You Should Stop Following #5: Using Hot Water to Kill Germs
Once upon a time, hot water was said to kill all the germs. But that's not necessarily true. In fact, using hot water alone to kill germs is ineffective. When someone is ill (with Covid, Flu, etc), those germs can spread to other fabrics whether you use hot or cold water.
As such, it's important that you use a disinfectant along with your laundry detergent (such as bleach, pine oil, Lysol, etc) to clean and disinfect the load. If you're worried about disinfecting the washer itself, run a load with just a disinfectant.
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