Rotating News Article

For: Week of August 11, 2003

By: Linda K. Bowman, Ext. Agt. IV - Family & Consumer Sciences

Santa Rosa County Extension Service

Telephone: 850/623-3868 or 939-1259, ext. 1360

Wash Day on Campus

Tips for the Laundry-Challenged Student

Doing laundry is often low on a college student’s list of “must do’s.” Left to accumulate, this simple task can easily become overwhelming. To counteract this, The Soap and Detergent Association offers these tips to make campus wash day much easier.

Get Clothes Washer-Ready. Empty the pockets. Take off belts, pins and other decorations that can’t be washed. Turn down pant and shirt cuffs. Close zippers, snaps and hooks. Tie strings and sashes so they won’t get tangled. During this process, read the garments’ care labels.

Sort using care label information, sort the clothes into five piles: whites and color-fast pastels; medium and bright colors; darks; anything labeled “delicate;” and a pile for towels and similarly fuzzy items. Clothes that are not color-fast, especially new jeans and anything red, must be washed separately. In the sorting process, it’s easy to overlook these problem garments.

Wash and Dry. Choose the water temperature and machine cycle that’s best for the load. Check the instructions on the laundry product labels for proper usage. In order to get clean, clothes need room to move in the washing machine so avoid overloading. If in doubt, add fewer clothes.

To help prevent the transfer of dyes from one garment to another, consider new products that act as dye collectors. This newest category of laundry care products is a reusable sheet embedded with millions of dye catchers that act like magnets, grabbing and holding particles of dye or other foreign material in the wash water.

Ironing is even lower than laundering on the “to do” list of most college students. Even students willing to do it find that most dorm rooms don’t have enough space for ironing boards. Key to avoiding the need for ironing is to avoid over-drying and to remove clean clothes promptly from the dryer. Over-drying causes other problems besides wrinkling, including shrinkage, static electricity build-up and extra wear on the fabric. For clothes that still need ironing, wrinkle-releasing sprays may do the trick.

For further information contact: Linda Bowman, Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent, The University of Florida--Santa Rosa County Cooperative Extension Service--IFAS, at (850)623-3868 or (850)939-1259, Ext. 1360 for south county residents, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Hearing-impaired individuals may call Santa Rosa County Emergency Management Service at 983-5373 (TDD).

Extension Service programs are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, age, handicap or national origin. The use of trade names in this article is solely for the purpose of providing specific information. It is not a guarantee, warranty, or endorsement of the product name(s) and does not signify that they are approved to the exclusion of others.