Everything you own arrives at a new place smelling faintly of cardboard and the inside of a truck. The first weeks of laundry after moving in are not really about dirty clothes, they are about resetting a whole household of fabric at once while the machine situation is still unresolved and half the boxes are unopened.
Why everything smells of the move
The stale smell after moving in is real and it has three sources, none of which is dirt.
Cardboard. New boxes give off a papery smell and used ones give off whatever they held before, and fabric picks it up within days.
Storage. Anything that sat in a unit, a garage or a truck takes on that space, and warmth speeds the process up considerably.
Time in a sealed container. Fabric packed slightly damp, or packed clean and then closed up for weeks, comes out flat and stale.
None of that responds to more detergent. It responds to water, movement and air, which is why an ordinary wash and a proper drying usually clears it.
For stubborn cases, half a cup of washing soda in the wash, or a cup of white vinegar in the rinse, does more than a stronger detergent will.
What to wash first
In the first week after moving in, do not try to wash everything. Work in the order you will actually need things.
Bedding for the beds you are sleeping in tonight comes first, before anything else is even unpacked.
Towels second, since they are needed within hours of arriving and they are the thing most often packed at the bottom of something.
A week of clothes third. Enough to get everyone dressed without unpacking a whole wardrobe.
Kitchen cloths and tea towels fourth, because they go into immediate use and they came out of a box.
Everything else can wait, and a good deal of it can wait until it is actually needed rather than being washed on principle.
Bedding before the first night
This is the one job worth doing on the day of the move rather than in the week after moving in.
Pack one set of sheets per bed into a bag you carry yourself, washed before you left and sealed shut, so the first night does not depend on finding the right box.
If that did not happen, wash a set the first evening. It is the difference between sleeping well and lying in a bed that smells of a truck.
Wash new bedding before use as well. New sheets carry finishes from manufacture and those come out in one cycle.
Air the mattress before making the bed, particularly if it travelled wrapped in plastic, which holds moisture against it for the whole journey.
Pillows are the item people forget. If they travelled loose in a truck they need washing, and they take a very long time to dry through the middle.
Working out an unfamiliar machine
The first laundry after moving in often happens on a machine nobody in the house chose, and the first load should be a cautious one.
Run an empty hot cycle before anything else. It tells you the machine fills, drains and does not leak, and it clears out whatever the last household left behind.
Find the model number inside the door frame and look up the manual. It takes five minutes and saves a great deal of guessing.
Check whether it is a high efficiency machine, since those need a low sudsing detergent and a much smaller dose. The wrong detergent in one is the usual cause of a musty new machine.
Run the first real load with towels rather than with good clothes, and stay in the room to watch it.
Check the hoses and the drain connection before leaving it running unattended, because a machine that has been moved has had every connection disturbed.
When there is no machine yet
Very common in the first weeks after moving in, and it is far easier to plan for than to improvise around.
Work out the volume first. Two people make about two loads a week and a family of four makes closer to six, and that number decides everything else.
Set a fixed day immediately, before the size of the pile gets to define the schedule for you.
Keep two bags going rather than one pile, splitting clothes from towels and bedding, which turns sorting into something you have already done.
Do the bulky things first, since bedding, towels and anything that came out of storage are the loads that need a large drum most.
And do not wait for the machine question to be settled. A backlog built over three weeks takes longer to clear than it took to build.
Setting a routine after moving in
The habit formed in the first month after moving in is the one that sticks, so it is worth choosing rather than letting it happen.
Pick a day and a time and attach it to something already fixed, which is easier in a new place because nothing else is established yet.
Put the hampers where they will actually be used before deciding where they look best.
Unpack the laundry supplies early. Detergent, a stain stick, mesh bags and spare hangers together in one place is what makes the routine possible at all.
Wash in the order things get worn rather than the order boxes get opened.
A new house is the easiest place to start a laundry routine and the easiest place to lose one, since everything is competing for the same few weekends.
The boxes not to unpack straight into a drawer
Some things go from box to drawer with no trouble. Others carry the move with them and will spread it to everything around them.
Anything that was in storage for more than a few weeks. It will make a clean drawer smell of the storage unit within days.
Anything packed in a used box, particularly one that held food or came out of a garage.
Anything that got damp on a rainy loading day, even slightly. Damp cardboard passes its smell into fabric quickly.
Seasonal clothes packed away at the end of last season without washing, since body oils will have oxidised into faint yellow marks by now.
And anything that smells of the old place when you hold it up close, which is the only test that really matters.
The Carmichael part
The season you move in changes the problem. Summers in the Sacramento area are long, hot and dry, and a July move means a truck interior well above the outside temperature, which drives smells deep into fabric and softens anything glued or laminated.
Heat also makes speed matter. Clothes and bedding sitting in a hot vehicle or a hot garage for a few days pick up far more of that smell than they would over a week of mild weather, so getting the fabric boxes out and opened on the first day is worth doing ahead of the furniture.
The upside is drying. In a dry summer here, laundry after moving in dries quickly indoors or out, so an extra rinse costs almost nothing and a large backlog can be cleared in a single day. Keep coloured items out of direct sun, which fades them fast in July.
Winter moves are the opposite problem. Mild wet winters mean boxes that sat on a driveway in the rain and cardboard that stayed damp inside a garage, and fabric that comes out of it smelling faintly musty. Anything that arrives damp after moving in needs opening and drying the same day rather than going into a cupboard to be dealt with later.
Where a whole household gets reset
A move produces bedding, towels and boxed clothes all at the same time, which is more than one home machine clears in a weekend.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Manzanita Avenue take several loads at once with the drum size for duvets and boxed bedding, and the water volume is what lifts a stale storage smell out of fabric rather than covering it.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Laundry after moving in is a reset rather than a clean up. The cardboard and storage smell in everything comes out with an ordinary wash, plus washing soda or a cup of white vinegar in the rinse for stubborn cases, rather than with more detergent. Wash in the order you need things, meaning bedding for tonight, then towels, then a week of clothes. Run an empty hot cycle on an unfamiliar machine and check whether it is a high efficiency model before dosing it. If there is no machine yet, set a fixed day in the first week after moving in and split clothes from bedding as you go, because a three week backlog takes far longer to clear than it took to build.
WaveMAX Carmichael is at 4780 Manzanita Ave, easy to reach from Carmichael and the surrounding area. If you have a load that will not fit at home, call us at 279-345-2234.