[securingsincity]

I got interested with these symbols when my son was born and I was doing all of our laundry what seemed like all hours of the day. So it was a good opportunity to play with machine learning and vision edge by gcp. Ended up building a pair of apps for iOS and android that can identify the symbols

https://jameshrisho.com/2020/10/making-laundry-less-terrible...

[wwwhizz]

I ended up washing everything on 40 degrees and throwing everything in the dryer. Works just fine.

[cmrdporcupine]

I noticed a huge difference in how long my clothing lasts once I switched to hang-drying most things. It's not that huge of a hassle and saves energy and I don't have to buy clothes as often. I started doing a lot more hang drying after I bought a bunch of merino wool base layers I use for skiing (which can't really be machine dried).

[hinkley]

If you look near the laundry baskets at any home or department store, you'll find comically large 'lingeree bags'. Turns out running anything with a fine weave through these - satin, rayon, exercise clothing, high TPI pillow cases - not only makes them last longer but also prevents pilling.

Always button and zip your jeans, and if you're not in a hurry, cotton clothing seems to be less worn by friction in the dryer than by the high heat. I run a lot of my cotton knits through twice on permanent press instead of once on cotton. And I don't use dryer sheets. Dryer sheets keep your clothes from getting static cling when you have over-dried them, but over-drying them damages them. The static cling is a symptom that you shouldn't ignore.

What you want to do is pull your clothes out when there is just a hint of moisture in them. The air and the latent heat should be more than enough to suck out that last hint of dampness. And if one towel or pair of pants is still damp, nothing stops you from running them by themselves for a couple minutes while you fold the rest.

[c0nsumer]

I do this for cycling clothing. (Almost all synthetic, some wool, fair amount of spandex-y stuff.)

This stuff lasts forever when washed on cool/warm and then hung.

Friends of mine have complained about one brand or another not lasting very long, but they've been tossing the stuff in the drier.

We're fortunate to have a basement with a nice beam I can place hangers on (for winter drying), or a hanging bar I fitted in the garage (for summer). Lately I've been getting rid of 8-10 year old stuff that I no longer like or no longer fits, and it's sellable, as opposed to just worn out.

(Doesn't sell for much, but folks will happily pay $20 - $30 for special print cycling jerseys that are still in good shape and cost $80-130 new. Way better than tossing them in the trash.)

[tuatoru]

If hang-drying outside, turn your stuff inside out.

UV from the sun kills bacteria, and you want that on the side near your skin, and as a bonus the inside fades (UV again) but the outside doesn't. I have some t-shirts that are quite faded on the inside but still reasonable on the outside.

[zmix]

...and should be washed as little as possible!

[wolverine876]

I assume you mean 40 C, not 40 F? I started washing everything on cold (my washer actually has a 'Tap Cold' setting - just tap water) and it works just as well. I encourage everyone to just try it once - it won't hurt anything and you can always re-run the load - and you will never go back. Also, you don't have to sort clothes.

I read in some credible, non-technical publication, I think the NYT or WSJ, an interview with a engineer in that field (something like detergents or washing machines) who said that detergents used to need heat to enhance the chemical reaction, but that it's no longer true and cold water works just as well.

EDIT: Does anyone know a good technical, authoritative resource on laundry? Consumer Reports has well-researched info, but not in the depth I'd like.

[aasasd]

I'm quite sure that plenty of bacteria don't die at 40°, let alone ‘tap cold’.

[wolverine876]

From the Consumer Reports article cited below:

> When a family member is sick, use hot water mixed with chlorine bleach to reduce bacteria in the bed linens and towels. The same goes for cleaning dirty cloth diapers, or other messes.

But also,

> Heating water accounts for about 90 percent of the energy needed to run a washer

So I only use heat for special occasions.

Article: https://www.consumerreports.org/washing-machines/dont-bother...

[astrange]

The washing machine isn't a heat sterilizer, the point of using hot water was just to activate the detergents.

[aasasd]

So when different clothes prescribe washing at different temperatures, it's because the ‘activation’ temperature of detergent changes depending on whether you use it with jeans or underwear?

[lgrebe]

As far as I know the clothes don’t prescribe a temperature to be washed at, but rather a maximum temperature threshold upto which the material can withstand without risking damage to itself.

So a 40°C cloth can be washed at any lower temp but might deform or loose color or even breakdown if washed warmer than that.

[wahern]

Instructions haven't kept up w/ washing machines and detergents.

> "Front-loaders and high-efficiency top-loaders run normal cycles 10 percent cooler than agitator washers, and the 'warm' wash temperature in the U.S. has declined by 15 degrees over the past 15 years," says Tracey Long, communications manager for P&G's fabric care products in North America. “Traditional detergent enzymes can be sluggish in cold water so we worked to create a mix of surfactants and enzymes that deliver cleaning performance in cold water across all product lines," says Long.

> Consumer Reports’ past tests found detergents have gotten much better at putting enzymes to work in removing dirt and stains at lower water temperatures, and are less effective at higher temperatures.

Source: Consumer Reports, "Don't Bother Using Hot Water to Wash Your Laundry: Consumer Reports' experts say cold water can get the job done", https://www.consumerreports.org/washing-machines/dont-bother...

If you want to sanitize anything, just use some bleach. It's harsh on fabric, but so is hot water, and the bleach will do a much better job. (FYI, I don't have any whites at all.)

[xzel]

My understanding that was for the special fabrics and/or the dyes used. For example raw indigo bleeds a whole lot more with higher heat. I know there are some fabrics and blends that are fragile compared to something like a cotton tshirt and recommend colder water.

[botverse]

I was recommended by a friend to put anti bacterial and wash with cold water so clothes won’t smell and won’t loose shape or color. Changed my life.

[dublin]

A tip we rediscovered a few years ago(it's well over a century old) is that adding a bit of borax to the washer not only helps get your laundry cleaner, but it will make all your laundry smell better, too, since borax/boron is an extremely powerful agent for killing bacteria, molds, and fungus. My wife is sold, and almost refuses to do the wash w/o borax anymore!

(This might even help deal with the continually scummy front-loader problem, but I can't speak to that as we prefer our 33-year-old Kenmore top loaders that can still actually be repaired rather than replaced with expensive new Chinese/Korean crap every few years. Mechanical timer controls and durable design and mfg FTW! For what it's worth, our total cost of purchase and repairs over 33 years is maybe $1200.00 for the washer/dryer set.)

[samwyse]

Re: “we prefer our 33-year-old Kenmore top loaders that can still actually be repaired rather than replaced” http://recraigslist.com/2015/10/they-used-to-last-50-years/

[toyg]

Ish. Dryers can literally melt heavily-synthetic clothes. Been there, done that.

[bluGill]

Turn the temperature down. You shouldn't dry anything that hot, it just wastes energy.

[BrianOnHN]

My dryer seems to only have one setting, "hot af so be careful what you put in here."

[cryptonector]

That's a sign of a broken or stuck thermostat. You can replace it (or have it replaced). I lost a few shirts once because of that.

[adrianmonk]

Or maybe a broken thermostat heater. Apparently this is a separate component sometimes.

What on earth is thermostat heater, you ask? Surprisingly, many dryers apparently have a simple fixed-temperature thermostat, and in order to make lower settings work, a heating element tricks that thermostat into perceiving a higher temperature.

If that heating element doesn't do its job, then the dryer acts like it's always on the highest setting.

From https://applianceassistant.com/Dryer-Repair/How-Electric-Dry... :

> The thermostat heater is often located within the cycling thermostat. However, it may sometimes be a separate component mounted to the dryer's cycling thermostat. Depending on the dryer's temperature setting, more or less voltage is supplied to this heater. Low settings supply more voltage and create more heat, while medium settings supply slightly less voltage, generating less heat. High heat settings will not energize the thermostat heater at all. In this way the thermostat is tricked into thinking that the dryer is hotter than it actually is, so it opens at a lower drum temperature.

[anamexis]

I can certainly see other reasons to not run the dryer so hot, but why would it waste energy?

[BrianOnHN]

The hotter the coils the higher the amount of energy that's required to maintain it.

[anamexis]

Well yes, but also the faster it dries your clothes and shuts off.

[bluGill]

Because all you are doing is heating up clothing.

Until near the end of the cycle your dryer is putting all the energy into evaporating water, so the temperature inside the dryer is actually fairly cool. Right at the end things change as the remaining water isn't enough to counteract all the energy being put in and so you heat the clothing to no purpose. So at the end off the cycle you should either shut off with a little moisture in the clothing, or regulate the temperature so that the heat input is balanced by the water evaporation.

[anamexis]

Wouldn't that be true for both high and low heat settings?

[peterburkimsher]

Sounds like we need ultrasonic no-heat clothes dryers to be commercialised. The technology is there - just play music to the water molecules, and they dance!

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/no-heat-no-problem-ultr...

[bkor]

The article compares the energy savings over an already inefficient dryer. The article mentions that an existing dryer takes 50min (average). Such dryers are not what anyone should buy, they waste too much energy. Over time it's cheaper to buy a heat pump dryer. Those easily take 2.5 hours to dry. They're significantly cheaper over an e.g. 5-10 year period than buying a cheaper and way more inefficient dryer.

The links to more detail with: > The goal of this project is to develop a clothes dryer prototype, using ultrasonic transducers, with an EF above 10 lb/kWh.

But also: > DOE’s Building Technologies Office is seeking new clothes dryer technologies that can increase the energy factor (EF) from 3.7 to 5.43 lb/kWh

However, a quick Google shows that the 3.7 is not a heat pump dryer, see e.g. https://www.intechopen.com/books/current-drying-processes/th.... The figure for an existing dryer should be 7.6 lb/kWh. Meaning, the solution is (currently) not good enough.

The link in the article and my link shows that the intend is to go way over 10 lb/kWh. The link I found showed it could be around 20 or even 44 lb/kWh (seems to depend on the frequency used). This while being way quicker than anything else, especially heat pump dryers.

[sdeframond]

Or microwaves?

(Better not leave anything metallic in there though...)

[scotty79]

Hey. If it melts it melts. Only survivors get to be worn.

[photojosh]

We have the same philosophy in the kitchen; we call it "dishwasher Darwinism" [0].

Unfortunately doesn't work quite as well with clothing. Or perhaps I could make an analogy that lingerie is like a good knife?

[0] Stolen from somewhere online and can't be bothered to find the original source.

[photojosh]

Aha, "dryer darwinism" works for the alliteration too. Can't believe I didn't realise that until now.

[Aloha]

I generally avoid any synthetic that is not a cotton blend, I want to be able to was on hot and dry on bake.

[NullPrefix]

Condescending tip - synthetics are for engine oils, not clothes ;)

[ambentzen]

For daily clothes, sure. For sports clothing, synthetics all the way. There is no worse pain in the world than sweaty chafing cotton.

[patentatt]

Yup, I’ve never once in my life paid any attention to any of this, and I only ruined one sweater once. My wife was not happy, it was a brand new cashmere sweater from some brand name. Still though, if that’s my only screw up and amortized over a lifetime of not caring about this, still positive ROI for me. Twist ending: we saved the severely shrunken fancy sweater and now it fits my kids, so not a total loss.

[dayre]

This has been my experience as well. They should simplify these to just TEXTILE CARE SYMBOL CASHMERE SWEATER and TEXTILE CARE SYMBOL EVERYTHING ELSE.

[m_eiman]

If you wash the sweater in conditioner and lukewarm water you can (carefully) pull it into its original shape. #lifehack

[m_eiman]

I probably mean ”soak” or ”handwash” rather than wash; I’m sure there’s an instructional video somewhere on the net.

[securingsincity]

a cashmere sweater shrunk to a child's size will change your mind about that approach

[falcor84]

Well, my approach is to limit my day-to-day clothes buying to just those washable in 40°C and machine dryable. Makes both the shopping and life overall so much easier.

[elliekelly]

Any women who still have to wear business attire interested in a similar approach should check out MM LaFleur. Well-designed, machine washable staple pieces at a (mostly) reasonable price. IIRC the company was founded by a young French woman who used to work in consulting and knows the pain of constantly needing to dry clean your clothes.

https://mmlafleur.com/

[pc86]

Yes, if you only buy things that you wash in 40 degree water and dry in a machine, you can just wash everything in 40 degree water and throw it in a machine.

[mikepurvis]

My rule of thumb is basically just to exclude from the dryer anything stretchy, slippery, knitted, or lacy. With that stuff hung to dry, what’s left is all the plain cotton shirts and jeans that can take whatever you throw at them.

[ungamedplayer]

Or you know, just hang everything out.

[mikepurvis]

Well yes, we do that sometimes too. But the point of this thread was a no-fail process for quickly doing laundry.

[bmicraft]

T-Shirts are almost always knitted. Do you propose never tumble drying t-shirts?

[mikepurvis]

By knits I’m referring to sweaters and the like, where the underlying material is wool or polyester.

[awwaiid]

Survival of the fittest! Hahaha

[ewindal]

Gotta wash on 60 sometimes too, though. Otherwise your t-shirts are going to become subtly smelly over time.

[scotty79]

If you have dryer it nearly strilizes everything you just washed with hot air.

I'm washing t-shirts in 40 deg and drying them in my washing machine with built-in dryer.

They come out a bit damp to avoid creasing too much. I never had them smell even though I was just unloading dryer into a huge pile of damp clothes and leaving them like that for a day or two to dry out completely. I even forgot to take them out of the washing mashine and found out few days later. They were still damp but didn't smell. I washed and dried them again though to be on the safe side.

[fomine3]

Most washers (especially top loading) in Japan don't support warming water so people wash with cold water, use hot bath water, or hopefully the house has hot water faucet for washer.

I've bought an expensive front loading washer-dryer with water heater (upto 60C) and heat pump dryer recently. Now I always wash with at least 15C water, even 15C, it's significant difference in cold winter situation.

[gardaani]

Underwear should be washed on 60 degrees to prevent any germs spreading.

[shawnz]

I have seen mixed evidence about hot water being more effective than cold water when washing. Do you have a reputable source?

[amanaplanacanal]

Does the detergent not sterilize everything?

[dehrmann]

It doesn't sterilize, but it does bind to viruses and bacteria so they can be washed away. It's the reason why you don't need antibacterial hand soap: you don't need to kill, washing off is enough.

[scotty79]

It doesn't. But drying in high temperature does.

[brylie]

Do you have any wool or linen items?

[tyingq]

Somewhat questions the value of these symbols versus text. Not disparaging the app, I'd need one to tell what they meant too.

[Tepix]

Text requires translation into thousands of languages.

[tyingq]

As do cryptic and unreadable symbols.

[ewindal]

Not on every piece of clothing you sell.

[sellyme]

The exact opposite is true. These symbols require (but do not have) translation on every piece of clothing, because almost no-one understands what they mean, and it's not currently possible to type them in to Google to identify their meaning.

On the other hand, if the text was just in a language that I did not speak, I can either type this into a translation app myself, or use the automatic translation camera on my phone to identify them.

And sure, I can apparently now do that for those washing symbols too, which is nice... but why is that information being conveyed in a "language" that almost no-one speaks? I'd be just as confused if every item of clothing I purchased had washing instructions in Lojban.

I fully understand why an attempt at standardised symbols was made, being able to communicate that information more compactly would be useful, but it very clearly failed. They're not intuitive enough to learn without third-party resources, and a very very tiny fraction of the population is willing to put in the effort to do so. Just use text.

[Tepix]

Everyone who washes clothes more than once a month will learn the meaning of this symbols rather quickly.

They are like traffic lights.

[tyingq]

Current state, I would have to figure out what to type into google to see what some symbol like ⧇ or △ means in laundry terms. Either better symbols I don't have to google, or text in a language that I don't speak...but can figure out. The ones with temperatures don't even have a degree mark.

[haileys]

It's strange that on a site like Hacker News people are so averse to learning new things. We seem to have no problem learning other kinds of symbol languages. These are standard symbols - you can search Google for "laundry symbols" to find a key

[securingsincity]

I would agree. The issue isn't that they are symbols, it is that the symbols are really hard to understand, other than hand wash where a hand is in a bucket of water the rest have little connection with the outside world.

[WalterBright]

No, it doesn't. Just type it into google. And each user only needs to do that once.

[WalterBright]

> a pair of apps for iOS and android that can identify the symbols

Sounds like a failure of the point of those symbols. How about using words instead? Then you don't need an app to decode them. You can use google translate if you must.

[milofeynman]

The ultimate -parent- hack is to only buy colored clothes (no whites... And if you happen to get any just wash them with the colored clothes anyway) non shrinkable clothes. Dry on low - "damp dry" so they don't all get fried. One load every 5+ days. The thicker clothes hang around the edge of the clothes basket (sweat pants in our case).

Oh and I guess just by normal kid clothes (cotton/polyester) so they don't have special instructions.

[seventh-chord]

I've been doing that for my own clothes. White t-shirts turn pink, but pink is a good look too so I don't really care. Maybe that means I'm still a kid :)

[fanf2]

We do that but how on earth do you manage with only one load every 5 days? We are a family of 4, one teenager, one under 10, and we’re doing one or two loads of laundry every day.

[leetcrew]

pants can usually be reworn 2-3 times. occasionally a shirt can be reworn if it was only used for part of a day. this might require an unusually clean child. as a single adult, I do laundry on a two week cycle. and that's driven more by my inventory of season-appropriate clothing than the capacity of my washing machine.

[mb7733]

1-2 loads of laundry every day for 4 people? How small is your washing machine?

[piceas]

In retrospect a 5.5kg front loader was a mistake for more than a couple of people in my experience.

[fanf2]

It’s a Miele W5780 which has a 7kg capacity

[bredren]

Would you please clarify how doing laundry constantly allowed time for ML research? Is it just because you had maternity/paternity, or was there something about the laundry workflow that let you squeeze in this activity?

[pas]

waiting for the laundry?

[shanecleveland]

Very nice. Came here to see if someone had already made this.

I wonder about helping manufacturers generate a QR code to use alongside the symbols to provide a detailed per-label translation?

[tinus_hn]

Very nice, my only comment would be that you can’t go back from the individual pages to the main page by swiping left (iOS)

[marton78]

"This app is not available for any of your devices", days Google Play Store...