Jesus fuck, you wonder why everything smells like mildew, it's because they ball up in the wash and don't rinse properly, and then they stay balled up and damp in the dryer.
Do you wash only a single fitted sheet or duvet cover at a time? Because the problem still happens when I wash my fitted sheet and normal sheets in the same load.
That can happen, but I find that if you separate the sheets as they are going in, and kind of scrunch up the fitted sheets and duvet covers so they don't start wrapped around the flat sheets or blankets, then they are far less likely to ball up in the wash.
I had a roommate in college that would wrap his sheets in the fitted sheet (along with other laundry) and throw it all in like a package. His laundry always smelled like mildew.
Or just get some laundry bags. Its honestly so much easier to just shove the offending item in a bag, throw it all in the wash, then I don't have to care about it until I take it out of the dryer. Come in handy for other items that love to ball up and evade washing.
I pick them out of the machine and put them into a dryer or set them out to dry. Seems to avoid part of this particular problem.
If we're out here handing intructions, you preferably shouldn't uses a dryer for your stuff anyway. It can damage them. Especially everything that's supposed to be elastic.
But then again, I don't always follow that rule. Some stuff with an elastic band I've put in a scorching hot dryer for close to a decade and it's fine. Some garbage shit lose the elasticity after a year or so even though you've washed them at 30 and don't ever put them into a dryer.
"Come here young pillowcases, young sheets! Shelter yourselves from the storm inside my waterproof arms and I shall keep you dry and help you keep your hard-earned coating of dirt and saliva from washing away."
I have not seen anyone reference this song in at least 10 years and then in the last 2 days I've seen it referenced 5 times, twice in this thread. I love it, but it's a bit of a weird coinky-dink xD
Thanks for reminding me to zip up the duvet cover next time I wash it, now if only there was an easy solution to the mattress cover doing the same thing...
Sometimes, sometimes not. Depends on the machine and the particular sheet in question. For some machines, 40°C seems to do the job for mostly everything.
The best way to maintain good-looking sheets is to wash them in low-temperature cycles—cold water is ideal. Sometimes, though, you will need to use warmer wash cycles. We recommend using warm water to lift out tough stains, like coffee, because the heat helps loosen and lift out the stain. We also use hot water to disinfect bedding after an illness or potty-training accident, or to get rid of allergens like dust mites.
In Laundry, Mendelson suggests avoiding sheets that have fussy care instructions because of this: “Your everyday sheets, especially those on infants’ and children’s beds, should be easy to launder vigorously and should never require gentle or complicated treatment.”
Just another thing that's only exists as a problem for idiots. As said already: you wash bedding separately and at 60°C, which you don't wash other clothes at. And few washing machines are big enough to effectively wash duvets with anything else.>!!<
you wash bedding separately and at 60°C, which you don’t wash other clothes at.
I think all my socks and boxers say to wash them at 60. I think it's a common temp for towels too, if you follow the tag. I mostly wash everything at 40 nowadays.
Washing elastic clothes at 60C sounds like a bad time.
Washing sheets at 60C is important for sanitary reasons, though, it's not worth it to try to save electricity by washing sheets below 60C. Clothes are normally washed at 30-40C, so they must be washed separately from sheets.