Your laundry-room poster
Answer four things, print one page, stick it above the machine. It prints clean — no navigation, no colours you'll regret, black on white.
In the print dialog, pick Save as PDF if you'd rather have a file. Turn background graphics off — it's designed to print without them.
Laundry, settled
Stuck to the machine so nobody has to ask. laundry.szil.fun
1 · Sort it
- Whites — white cotton, shirts, sheets. Warm or hot.
- Colours & darks — everything else you wear. Cold.
- Delicates — wool, silk, lace, bras. Cold, gentle, mesh bag.
- Towels & heavy — towels, bedding, muddy kit. Hot.
- Anything new and brightly dyed washes alone the first time.
2 · Temperature
- Cold 30°C / 85°F — most things. Colours, denim, activewear, anything that might shrink.
- Warm 40°C / 105°F — whites, baby clothes, mildly grubby.
- Hot 60°C / 140°F — towels, bedding, dish towels, illness.
- Kids in the house: diapers and sick bedding go hot, with an extra rinse.
- Protein stains (blood, sweat, sick) set permanently in hot water — cold rinse those first.
3 · The five products
- Liquid detergent — everyday, dissolves in cold.
- Oxygen bleach — food, coffee, wine, grass. Colour-safe.
- Stain pre-treat spray — before the wash, not after.
- Wool dryer balls — instead of dryer sheets.
- White vinegar — funk and hard-water buildup.
Hard water: use a little more detergent than the dose line says, or powder with a builder in it — hard-water minerals disable part of every dose. A vinegar rinse keeps scale off the machine.
Soft water: use less than the dose line. Soft water needs less detergent, and over-dosing is what leaves clothes stiff and grey.
Gym kit: no fabric softener, ever — it coats the fibres and locks the smell in. Wash inside out, cold, with a vinegar rinse when it turns.
Pet hair: a 10-minute no-heat tumble before the wash gets most of it into the lint trap. Wet hair in the drum just welds itself to everything.
4 · Never
- Never mix bleach with ammonia (in some cleaners) — it makes chloramine gas.
- Never mix bleach with vinegar or any acid — it makes chlorine gas.
- No fabric softener on towels, activewear, or flame-resistant baby sleepwear.
- No dryer on a stain you haven't removed — heat sets it for good.
- No chlorine bleach on wool, silk, elastane or anything coloured.
5 · Machine
- Front loader: use HE (low-suds) detergent only — normal detergent over-foams and won't rinse out.
- Leave the door and the drawer open between washes. A closed front loader grows the smell.
- Wipe the rubber door seal dry; that fold is where the black mould lives.
- Run a hot empty maintenance wash monthly.
- Top loader: let it fill and dissolve the detergent before the clothes go in.
- Don't pack it — clothes need room to move or nothing gets clean.
- Uses more water than a front loader, so it's more forgiving on dosing but costs more per load.
- Washer-dryer combo: the dry load is roughly half the wash load. Take half out before drying.
- They dry slowly and hungrily — line dry when you can and you'll notice it on the bill.
- HE detergent only, and leave the door open between runs.
Every single load: clean the lint filter. It's the fire risk and the reason drying takes twice as long.
Drying indoors: crack a window or run an extractor. A full load puts a couple of litres of water into the air, and that's where the damp on the walls comes from.
6 · The label, in four lines
- Tub = washing · triangle = bleach · square = drying · iron = ironing · circle = professional cleaning.
- A cross through it means don't. No exceptions.
- Dots mean heat — more dots, more heat.
- Bars underneath mean go gentler — one bar easier, two bars barely touch it.