Source(s): Male, Lived alone since age 18, Never got taught to do the laundry.

There's pretty much just a couple of rules:

Don't wash new stuff with your regular stuff. They leach colour the first wash or so. They leach moreso on hotter washes.

Don't wash towels and stuff with nice shirts. Why? Lint is why.

Always check your pockets before you put them in the wash. All of them. Even the pockets you never use. Why? Cause that one tissue, bit of paper, handful of coins, cellphone, or bag of weed is gonna ruin your whole load, and your whole day on the day that you don't check.

Aside from that, wash everything in whatever order you want. Lint-irrellevant items, like socks, underwear, or washcloths, put them in with your towels.

I wash white shirts with blue jeans without a problem, but it still concerns me. If you're in doubt, leave the good white shirt til the next load. Otherwise, anything not white and not lint-giving is fair game.

I do two loads a week. One is work clothes, inc white shirts, and the other is towels, socks, underwear, washcloths, etc. That's all. Not much to it. I always wash in hot water with the fastest spin too.

My mother taught me her system and it has worked for me so far. Put simply it categorizes your laundry into:

Whites + towels
Colors

That's it. When you've wrapped your brain around that, here are the finer points.

Wash new things with heavy dyes by themselves first. I wash jeans and reds by themselves the first time.

Wash whites and lighter towels together (unless you have a house full of red towels, in which case I'd wash towels in a separate load with reds). There's nothing special about the towels, it's just that our whites loads were always smaller than the colors loads so this was an efficient way to do laundry.

Wash all colors together. Throw in your new darker towels (after a few washes these can go in with your whites). If you're paranoid about dyes being absorbed invest in some color catchers.

Pre-treat all stains as soon as possible. Shout has always worked well for me. Follow the directions on the product.

Check all of your new clothes for special treatment instructions to make sure you don't fuck them up.

Let's talk "no iron" dress shirts. You need to take them out of the dryer as soon as that shit stops tumbling. If you miss it by more than a few minutes, and the clothes are wrinkled, don't panic. Remove all other laundry and toss a damp towel in with them for another ten minutes or so.

If you're a cheap bastard like me, use cold water for your wash and rinse cycles. I have never noticed a difference.

Also on the topic of cheapness, my mother would use the dryer for a set period of time, and any clothes that were still damp (which was all of them because clothes don't dry in 30 fucking minutes) would get hung up to finish drying. This stretches t-shirts out like a motherfucker, so avoid this whenever possible.

My work coveralls get fuel and oil on them, so I do wash those separately just to be on the safe side.

I've also picked up the habit of turning my nice clothes inside out to dry. That way if they pick up any little mystery marks from the dryer, it's on the inside and I don't have to wash them again before wearing.

Make sure you empty the lint trap in your dryer before every load. Did you know that dirty lint traps are the number one cause of fires onboard submarines! Go impress your friends.

My system is (and has always been) this:

Dirty clothes in big big bag.
Sunday - take big big bag to launderette.
Empty bag into washing machine which can accommodate the contents and have a little bit of space left over.
Normal wash - warm
Generic concentrated washing powder and no softener (it ruins towels!)
Pull clothes out of machine once washed, and straight into giant dryer.
Full heat on dryer for 40 minutes.
Take stuff out, fold immediately, put back in giant bag in a stack.
Take stuff home, hang it up if needed. That's it.

I've always mixed every damn thing together and never suffered for it. Probably because I don't buy clothes which a hippie made by dying yak hair with teabags and crushed flowers. Pretty much everything is colorfast these days.

But if you're going to wear wool - buy it three sizes too big. It only shrinks once.

>>1514
I also do all wash together. This is because I pay per load in my apartment building and I'm a miser.

>>1497
No to the jeans

All this is good advice, but if you're weird shaped you get some extra rules. I'm really tall and thin, so if any of my shirts or jeans see the dryer they don't fit anymore. Hang dry these, everything else into the dryer. Also, cold water helps things stay the same size.

Best plan is to not to move too far away from your mother.Then you can drop over regularly and let her do your laundry.Pick it up the next day.It will save you $$$(since you are $ frugal)