Saturday, March 29, 2008

Laundry

When I do laundry, I first put my clothes in the washer, then pour soap on, and then turn the machine on. But everytime I see someone else do it, they turn on the machine, put in the soap and let it run for a few minutes before eventually putting the clothes in. I don't understand this. First of all, aren't you wasting the running time of the machine? Water's running, machine is going...it's not like it waits for the clothes to go in to ay "okay, I'll start officially timing the cycle...NOW!", right? Also, aren't you running the risk of wasting soap? While you're dickering around not putting the clothes in, the soap can escape through the drain holes and disappear, no? Am I just 100% wrong about this?

1 comment:

Gina said...

I have to answer this and then I will leave you forever alone. i've seen people do this and i think the argument here is quality (proper dilution of solvent) over quantity (time). The premise is that your clothes stand a better chance of getting clean if they can become thoroughly saturated and agitated in warm sudsy water for whatever time is permitted. Powdered detergent requires time and exposure to free water in scientifically measured quantities in order to dissolve throughly and evenly. Otherwise, if the saturation of soap to water is too high (which is what happens when you dump powder on top of your clothes), the powder can precipitate in the clothing, resulting potential skin irritation, and less concentration of soap in the remainder of the water. Clothing in the water also presents a mechanical problem as it can act as a physical barrier to the even distribution of soap per gallon of water. So, for all of the time you've been standing there, enjoying your full 2 bucks of agitation, you wind up with less cleansing pleasure. Try it the other way, or better yet, save up your wash load for a month and use the giant front-loading triple loader. 20 quarters to clean. 12 to dry. triple rinse!