Nobody teaches this. People leave home and work it out from a mixture of guessing, one thing a parent said once, and whatever the machine’s buttons seem to imply.
Here is the whole thing, in the order you actually do it.
Before anything goes in the machine
Check pockets. Every garment, every time. A pen destroys a load, a coin or a hairpin destroys a drain pump, and a tissue coats everything in lint that takes several washes to clear.
Close zippers, fasten hooks, close Velcro. Open hardware snags and tears everything it tumbles against. Leave buttons undone, which is the opposite rule, because a buttoned shirt puts all the strain on the buttonhole.
Turn dark items and anything printed inside out. Fading is abrasion on the outward-facing surface, so this is free protection.
Deal with stains now. A stain that goes through a dryer is usually permanent. Cold water on anything from a body or a plant, since heat sets protein stains. Dish soap on grease.
Sorting, and the one that actually matters
Everyone is taught to sort by colour. Sort by fabric weight first, because that is the sort that changes outcomes.
Towels, jeans, and canvas in one load. Shirts and lighter cotton in another. Heavy fabric abrades light fabric during the tumble, and heavy fabric holds far more water, so a mixed load either over-dries the shirts or leaves the towels damp.
Then colour, and only for two cases that genuinely matter: anything brand new and deeply dyed goes alone for its first few washes, and whites you want kept white go together so they can take hotter water and oxygen bleach.
For everyday laundry washed cold, mixing colours is fine. Modern dyes are stable.
Detergent, where most people go wrong
Use less. Considerably less.
Roughly two tablespoons of liquid for a normal load in a high efficiency machine, which is nearly all machines now. The cap is not a measuring device, and most households use three or four times what they need.
Too much detergent does not rinse out, stays in the fabric, holds odour, and creates suds that cushion the rubbing action the machine uses to clean. More detergent genuinely washes worse.
Check the bottle says HE if your machine is high efficiency. And skip fabric softener entirely, which coats fibers, wrecks towel absorbency, and makes activewear hold smell permanently.
Temperature
Three settings and a simple logic.
Cold for anything dark or new, anything that might shrink, and any stain from a body or a plant.
Warm for most things, and specifically for towels, sheets, socks, underwear, and anything worn while sweating. Body oil is the main soil in household laundry and cold water does not dissolve it. This is the setting most people under-use.
Hot for whites you want kept white, kitchen cloths, and laundry after illness.
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Do not pack it. Clothes clean by moving through water and against each other, and a packed drum rotates as a single mass with the middle barely getting wet.
The test: you should be able to lay a flat hand on top of the load with room above it. If the drum looks comfortably full, it is too full.
One bulky item at a time. A comforter or a blanket needs the whole drum to itself or it wraps and never washes through.
The dryer
Clean the lint screen every single load. This is not optional and it is the most skipped step in laundry.
Use the moisture sensor setting rather than a timer, if the machine has one. A timed cycle keeps running after the load is dry, and every minute past dry is pure wear with no benefit.
Sort by weight here too. Towels take much longer than shirts, so drying them together bakes the shirts.
Take things out the moment it stops, or better, slightly damp, and hang them. Fabric sets as it cools, so a load left to cool in a heap comes out creased and you have undone your own work.
Some things never go in a dryer at all: wool, silk, anything with elastane such as leggings and bras, anything with a printed graphic, and leather.
What to buy, once
A short list. HE liquid detergent, oxygen bleach, white vinegar, a few mesh bags for small items and anything with underwire, wool dryer balls instead of dryer sheets, and three laundry baskets rather than one so sorting happens on the way in rather than in a heap on the floor.
That is genuinely everything. The rest of the laundry aisle is optional.
The Phoenix version
Two local things worth knowing from the start.
The water here is hard, which means minerals bind with detergent and reduce its effectiveness. The instinct is to add more detergent, which makes the residue problem worse. Add half a cup of washing soda instead, which handles the minerals and lets a normal dose work.
The dry air is the second, and it works in your favour. Things air dry here remarkably fast, indoors or out, which means you can skip the dryer for anything delicate and it will still be ready the same day. Dry in shade rather than direct sun, though, because Phoenix sun fades dye and degrades elastane quickly.
One warning that matters in summer: a wet load left in a machine in this heat sours within hours rather than overnight. Do not start a load you will not be there to move.
When home is not the place to do it
A first apartment often means a shared machine down the hall, a stacked unit in a closet with a tiny drum, or no machine at all. All three make bedding, towels, and anything bulky genuinely difficult.
The machines at our self-service laundry on West Camelback Road let you run a full week in one visit instead of four small loads across four evenings, with the drum size for a comforter to actually tumble.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily, which is the thing a shared building laundry room does not get.
Our wash-dry-fold service is there for the weeks when it all gets away from you.
The short version
Check pockets, close zippers, leave buttons undone, and treat stains before washing because a dryer makes them permanent. Sort by fabric weight before colour. Use about two tablespoons of detergent, not a capful, and skip fabric softener. Wash warm for towels and anything worn while sweating, cold for darks and protein stains, hot for whites. Load so a flat hand still fits above the clothes. Clean the lint screen every load, use the moisture sensor, and take things out while slightly damp. In hard water add washing soda rather than more detergent, and never leave a wet load sitting in a Phoenix summer.
WaveMAX Phoenix on Camelback is at 1615 W Camelback Rd, easy to reach from central Phoenix and the surrounding area. If your building’s machines cannot handle a week’s laundry, call us at 480-284-4001.