Dear Mr. Laundry,
I’m rather farsighted
and without a microscope I can’t read the washing instructions on most of my
clothing tags. I can make out the
symbols, though. Problem is, I don’t
understand them. Can you translate?
Walter Darnell, St.
Louis, MO
Dear Wally,
Here’s a nice summary of the washing symbols, but be
careful: these are the American ones and
may not match the overseas symbols used in your clothing:
(Click above to zoom in.)
Fortunately, lots of clothing gives you the various versions
of symbols you might encounter based on what country you’re in:
See? Some countries
use black bleach, apparently. Others
have really weird looking irons. Some
keep their bleach in beakers. The circle
with the P in it? P
for Permitted, I assume. A for Allowed, perhaps? Or A-OK?
Dear Mr. Laundry,
Help! My wife is a very careless laundress. Wait, let me restate that. She’s not a laundress. Not by profession. What I mean is, she is very careless about
the laundry. She’s always putting, like,
cashmere sweaters through the washer and dryer, or washing my Lycra on hot and
drying it on high. Is there anything to
be done?
[Name and location
withheld by request]
Dear Withheld,
All I can recommend is getting as involved in the laundry as
you can. Develop a system for hiding
those non-machine-washable garments. I
wouldn’t nag your wife too much about it because this just won’t do any good and
you need to pick your battles … marriage counselors and divorce lawyers are a
lot more expensive than clothes, after all.
(If your wife has a sense of humor, and has seen the film “Raise the Red Lantern,” you might yell—upon discovering another ruined garment—“Cover the lanterns!”)
Also, look for the silver lining. My sister-in-law inherited a nice wool
sweater from a guy who shrunk it in the dryer.
Then she shrunk it in the
dryer and so it went to her daughter, and so on down to her toddler. As for me, my wife put my nice merino wool
sweater through the wash and made it all ratty, which greatly increased its
utility because I no longer had to “keep it nice.” In fact, it became my favorite sweater for
this very reason. When’s the last time
you got to work on your bike while wearing merino wool?
Dear Mr. Laundry,
I’m terrible about
leaving things in my pockets when I put things through the wash. I’ve ruined three cell phones this way! Is there any cell phone you know of that can
survive a trip through the wash?
Sarah Kitteredge, Providence,
RI
Dear Sarah,
The Motorola FONE (aka Motofone) F3 is the only one I know of. My nephew
put this through the wash twice, and the first time it survived completely
intact.
If you’re looking for a smartphone that will handle this, I
think you’re dreaming. That said, my
Motorola Droid Turbo fell into the ocean recently and was almost swept out to
sea, but miraculously survived. But a
full wash cycle? I wouldn’t try it!
Dear Mr. Laundry,
Is it true that other
developed countries are less profligate than the US when it comes to drying
everything in the dryer?
Robin Baxter,
Portland, OR
Dear Robin,
In much of Europe, line drying is very popular. In England, even in London, I’ve seen
permanent clotheslines in backyards (or “gardens” as they’d call them). And check out this rig in an apartment in
Glasgow:
My brother had an apartment in The Netherlands with no dryer
… he line dried everything, including cloth diapers.
In the U.S., of course, you’re more likely to run into a
homeowners’ association ban on clotheslines, even though these bylaws are
currently illegal in 19 states! Fortunately, you’re protected by a
1979 Oregon Law that says any restrictions on “solar radiation as a source for
heating, cooling or electrical energy” are “void and unenforceable.”
Dear Mr. Laundry,
You have a Ph.D. in
Laundry Science from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Why don’t you call yourself “Dr.
Laundry”? Just curious.
Bob Snelling, Phoenix,
AZ
Dear Bob,
I am aware that The Clorox Company has an online Q&A
called “Dr. Laundry” and I don’t want to get into legal trouble like Mr. Beer
did, that poor bastard. He tried to
use “Dr. Beer” and was sternly warned to “cease and desist.” Those close to him say he never recovered
from the ordeal.
Dear Mr. Laundry,
What’s the funniest
laundry instruction tag you’ve seen?
Alex Hayle, New York
City, NY
Dear Alex,
Are we talking intentionally funny, or unintentionally? Here’s a winner in both categories:
That’s from a pair of bike shorts. The manufacturer is clearly having a little
fun with “Avoid crashes.” But it’s
unintentionally funny, I think, that the size is given as both XXL and M; that
there are two sets of washing instructions that contradict each other; and that
we get this cryptic instruction, “Iron low, right side only.” What could possibly be the point of that
restriction? And who in the history of
mankind has ironed a pair of bike shorts?
I also like this tag, from a pair of bike gloves:
“Don’t allow to lay on itself or with other items when
wet”? How do you keep something from
laying [sic] on itself, anyway? Or even
from lying on itself? What could
possibly be the consequence of this happening?
And what shape could you reshape the glove into that it wouldn’t be
lying on itself? And can you really
reshape a glove to begin with?
Dear Mr. Laundry,
Let’s get down to
brass tacks: when laundering is taken
into consideration, are cloth diapers actually better for the environment than
disposable?
Juanita Perez, El
Paso, TX
Dear Juanita,
This article suggests that cloth diapers are actually highly problematic because they’re
made of cotton, and as she puts it, “the data on cotton is damning.” I don’t put a lot of stock in this article
because the author works for a think tank that represents the interests of the
waste management industry; because she thinks “data” is singular; because I’m
not going to stop wearing cotton in favor of disposable clothing (which would
be the natural extension of this article’s conclusion); because this article presents a pretty good rebuttal; and because babies are quicker to be
potty-trained when they’re clad in cloth diapers, which isn’t even considered
in the article.
I’m not saying everybody should necessarily switch to cloth
diapers. After all, cloth diapers are a
huge hassle. In fact, babies are a huge
hassle. (On the flip side, vasectomies are arguably a pretty serious hassle, too.)
Dear Mr. Laundry,
What pre-washing,
stain-removing product is better: Spray
‘n Wash, or Shout?
Charles Simon, Boston,
MA
Dear Chuck,
They seem to work about the same, as far as I can tell. So the difference has more to do with what
song you get in your head upon using them.
If you watched TV during the ‘80s, you’ll likely get the “Spray ‘n Wash gets out what America gets into” jingle lodged in your brain, which can be annoying.
On the other hand, if you listened to the radio during the ‘80s, you’ll
probably fall prey to the Tears for Fears song “Shout.” This song is terribly catchy, and
includes the line “in violent times you shouldn’t have to sell your soul,”
which makes no sense. It implies that you
should only have to sell your soul during peacetime. WTF??
Dear Mr. Laundry,
Do you have any answer
to the widely acknowledged mystery of why so many socks get lost in the dryer?
Tom Mahoney,
Littleton, CO
Dear Tom,
I researched this phenomenon for years, tirelessly, and got
nowhere, and then I stumbled across this blog post, “Conundrum of the Lost Sock,” and realized all my work had been in vain because everything that could ever
be said on this topic has already been said.
Glad I could provide the link to you, anyway.
Dear Mr. Laundry,
What’s the most absurd
washing instruction you’ve ever seen?
Wanda Bobat, Boseman,
MT
Dear Wanda,
Definitely this one right here:
That’s a tough one to read (whose idea was it to print the
washing instructions on a black tag,
for crying out loud?) so here it is in plain text:
“WARNING! This garment has received a special dyeing treatment in order to achieve its unique appearance. Colour may vary from piece to piece. Please wash this garment separately, inside out and avoid exposure to sunlight which might alter the fabric’s appearance… Avoid making contact with light coloured surfaces. Be careful with light coloured clothes—body heat may cause bleeding.”
I don’t even know where to start here. I guess I’ll go sequentially. First, “WARNING!” I mean, is this a washing instruction, or a
safety advisory? And then, “Colour may
vary from piece to piece.” I mean, isn’t
that true of everything? And why do we need a label telling us
this? Can’t we tell, just by looking,
that this pair of jeans is a different color than that one? If this “warning” is targeted toward blind
people, why isn’t it in braille? Then we
get to “avoid exposure to sunlight.” Is
this a pair of jeans, or a vampire’s cape?
Who doesn’t wear jeans outdoors?
Are these jeans exclusively for nightclubbing? And in what way could sunlight “alter the
fabric’s appearance” other than fading it?
Has society gotten so far off-track that faded blue jeans are no longer
acceptable? And then we get to the
startling conclusion: “Body heat may
cause bleeding.” So I guess even
nightclubs are off-limits unless you’re determined to just sit there on a bar
stool, as still as possible, perhaps shivering in a dark-colored t-shirt? Give me a break.
Dear Mr. Laundry,
What would happen—hypothetically
speaking—if you didn’t separate your darks from your lights in the laundry?
Lisa Stone, San
Francisco, CA
Dear Lisa,
Believe it or not, I’ve been doing just that—for
decades! My recklessness has produced
almost no negative consequences. My
whites are plenty white. Nothing has
bled, not even the jeans that are vulnerable to body heat. The single exception is a pair of
unripe-plum-colored yoga pants my wife ran through that turned everything
pink. They were pure garbage, those
pants.
Have you ever noticed how laundromat dryers will tell you to
dry all cotton garments on high—and yet you’ll never encounter a single tag
that says “tumble dry high”? In decades
of careful laundering I think I’ve only encountered one garment that even said “tumble
dry medium.” I think it’s a giant
liability shift on the part of the Clothing Industrial Complex. They create these stupid rules for laundering
so that if anything ever goes wrong with a garment they can blame the consumer. Look at this tag: the manufacturer blames the clothing ’s “pilling effect” on zippers, Velcro, and even embroidered saddles.
Dear Mr. Laundry,
Will you do my
laundry?
Greg Crow, St. George,
UT
Dear Greg,
No.
Mr. Laundry is a
syndicated columnist whose advice column, “Ask Mr. Laundry,” appears in over
400 blogs worldwide.
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