No one really puts much thought to doing the weekly laundry because the reality is that it looks so simple; so not surprisingly, according to leading soap manufacturer Procter & Gamble, many households miss the proper laundry handling procedures.

How do you do your wash? Most folks pack the clothes to fill the washer, keep the default settings, drop a capful of soap and fire it up. Some dutifully sorts out the colors, but not necessarily the material type, or the proper detergent for each load.

Americans have the largest wardrobes in the history of the world, a May 2002 Wall Street Journal article reports, and we’re spending considerably more time doing our laundry now than 40 years ago. A recent study is finding that the average American household spends seven to nine hours per week tending to laundry activities.

Imagine if that was Your task after everything else you have to do in the day! Still, the clothes are coming out less clean with more wear-and-tear than elsewhere in the world.

The way we wash haven’t changed that much, but the machinery have. Retail markets have trended towards the fancy the top-loading machines, as opposed to the gentler, front-loading machines. The agitator in the middle on a top-loader is designed to beat up garments and knock the dirt out of them, at the cost of damaging your gentle fabric. It is actually the tumbling motion of the front-loader that reaches a better level of cleanliness without the unnecessary roughness. We often never read the instruction booklets on our specific washing equipment to properly operate it for specific maintenance cycles, wash time, load weight, garment types, and so on. The end result is clothing wearing thin faster and not coming out as clean as it should be. The additional side-effect is we end up washing the less cleaned clothes more often as well.

To counteract the inadvertent uncleanliness and unnecessary waste, we’ve put together a list of tips and suggestions for getting the most out of your wardrobe and machinery in the ‘Doing the Laundry Right’ section reading. Alternately, you can always bring whatever wash you have to Lan’s Lapels and let us take care of everything professionally down to the science. All you’ll have to do is pick it up or have it delivered when it’s done. Perfectly washed clothes professionally done right by my standards.