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Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide for Caring for Everything in Your Home

Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House

Load up on laundry know-how.

Static cling, bleach spots, shrunken sweaters—the laundry room can seem like a frightening place. With just a little basic knowlege, though, you can keep your wardrobe and linens fresh and flawless. Teach yourself how to:

Care for different fabrics and choose the right laundry supplies
Get great results from any washer or dryer, at home or at a laundromat
Iron out wrinkles and keep all your clothes in top shape

Laundry Basics

Typical household laundry consists mainly of clothing, towels, and bed linens. Depending on the number of people in your household, you may need to wash dirty laundry anywhere from once to several times a week. Regardless of the amount of laundry that accumulates in your home, it’s important to stick to a regular schedule. If neglected, dirty laundry can easily pile up, leaving you with a shortage of clean clothes and linens—not to mention a job that’s more time-consuming than it needs to be.

How to Sort Laundry

Sorting laundry is the process of separating dirty clothing and linens into separate loads according to their similar washing and drying needs. Sorting is an important routine that saves water and energy, protects fabrics, and eases the process of everyday laundering. Though it may seem like an arduous task, sorting can save your belongings from irreversible damage, such as fading, shrinking, and tearing. Laundry is usually sorted according to color and/or fabric content.

Whites: Items that are primarily white should be washed together in hot water, preferably with bleach to maintain their brightness. Whites include undershirts, underwear, towels, socks, and most bedsheets.
Light colors: Pale-colored clothing and linens can be washed together in either warm or cold water, depending on their fabric content. You may opt to use colorsafe bleach to maintain the brightness of light colors.
Dark colors: Items that are very bold or bright in color can bleed dye onto other fabrics. To avoid this, group dark-colored fabrics together and wash them in cold or warm water, depending on their fabric content.
Delicates: Items made of fine, fragile materials, such as lace or silk, should be washed together, either by hand or on your washer’s delicate cycle (see Washing Machines) in a mesh bag that’s washing machine–safe. Unprotected delicates can pull and tear if subjected to a regular machine washing.
Other categories: In addition to the above loads, be sure to keep lint-producing fabrics, such as terrycloth, separate from lint-attracting fabrics, such as knits. Wash heavily soiled items separately from lightly soiled items. And though it’s a good idea to combine different-sized items within each load (the mix facilitates cleaning action in a washer), it’s best to avoid pairing very bulky items, such as duvets, with much smaller items, such as socks.

Household Laundry Schedule

Your laundry schedule will depend on many factors, including the number and age of people in your household and the amount of time you have to devote to the task. The following general guidelines can help you devise a consistent laundry schedule that suits your lifestyle.

Item		How Often to Launder
Sheets		Once a week
Blankets/quilts		Once a month
Bath towels		Once a week (twice in humid weather or larger households)
Kitchen towels		Daily or every other day if you cook a lot; once a week if you cook less often
General clothing (pants, shirts, etc.)		After each wearing
Undergarments, socks, and gym clothes		After each wearing (bras can be worn more than once between washings)