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Hey, it's Michael. Today, we're bringing you something I think you're going to find super useful.

Maybe you've heard of Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times. It's where our colleagues in the Wirecutter newsroom combine independent research with first-hand obsessive testing to help you make quick and confident decisions about what to buy. It's where I've gone for years to find the best air conditioner, the perfect frying pan, and an outdoor grill that is affordable but somehow still classy. And now,

Wirecutter has a new podcast, The Wirecutter Show. Each episode goes deep on an everyday problem and how to solve it. You'll hear testing stories that go above and beyond, get product suggestions, and learn tons of tips, tricks, and advice. Today, we're going to hear all about, wait for it, laundry. Talk about news you can actually use.

So take a listen, and afterward, search for The Wirecutter Show wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe to it. New episodes drop every Wednesday. And here is the first one. From The New York Times, you're listening to The Wirecutter Show. Hey, everyone. It's The Wirecutter Show. I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Cyr-Claisset. And I'm Rosie Guerin. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from The New York Times. ♪

Each week, we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better. Today's episode of The Wirecutter Show is called The Secret to Better Laundry.

It's our very first episode. Hooray! Love it. Our inaugural episode. Should we tell people a little bit about who we are and what we're doing here? Yeah, absolutely. So, Christine, what is Wirecutter? What does Wirecutter do? Well, Wirecutter is a product recommendation service. We're part of the New York Times company. We have about 140 journalists who do rigorous product testing. And what we mean by that is they are very serious about the products they test. What are we talking about here?

So I'll give a couple examples. We've done a guide to hiking boots. And for that one, our writers tried out 55 pairs of boots and hiked 1,400 miles over seven years. I mean, that's a lot of steps, you know. Another example, this one's kind of wild. We did a review of fire safes and our writer actually built a room and burned everything.

with all these fire safes inside of it. I mean, that's the kind of lengths our journalists go to test things. Tried and true service journalism. Absolutely. Committed. And we're also independent, which that means we don't let companies pay us to review their products, and we don't take freebies. Our recommendations are based only on what we really believe is the best stuff. It's a really fun place to work, and I'm excited to introduce listeners here to the amazing people I work with, like Kyra. Huh?

Hi. Kyra, who are you? So I'm a writer and I cover all things sleep and I test mattresses. People find it hilarious because I get to say that I sleep for a living and I've probably tested about 100 mattresses at this point for work.

I've been at Wirecutter for four years, but Christine here has actually been here longer than me. That's right. I'm OG. I've been here 11 years, nearly since the site was started, and I'm an editor. How about you, Rosie? Who am I? Yeah, who are you? I'm the show's executive producer, and I'm kind of going to be your producer's sidekick here to pose the questions that, you know, us normies have.

Well, we're so happy to have you here. Aw, thanks, Kyra. So to that end, why are we all here? Let's tell the people. I mean, what are we doing on this show? What's the plan? Look, we get tons of questions from people about problems they encounter or things that they're just trying to hack or solve.

And our staff has a lot of expertise to share. Right. So we want to bring all of that to audio every week. We're going to sit down with a Wirecutter journalist and talk through a topic that we think people could use some advice on. We'll give product recommendations like we always do on the site, but this is going to be a lot more than that. We're going to talk through solutions, ideas, hacks, and ways that you can really make your life better. And sometimes we'll even invite outside experts to come on. I love it.

And that's why I think today's episode is so good to start with, because it's a problem that we all have. But maybe we don't realize that we have. And I am talking about laundry. Why are you looking at me? No, you're right. I don't think I ever properly learned to do my laundry. I really hope my mom's not listening. Sorry, mom! Sorry, mom!

Rosie, I'm going to make the confession that I, too, don't think that I know how to do my laundry. I'm in such good company. Yeah. I mean, I'm a lady. I'm a grown lady. You are a lady. Maybe that's why I don't know how to do my laundry, because I'm a lady. Yeah. And someone else should be doing it for me. Yes. Yes. The issue with, like, the entire time as an adult, I feel like, is that I've just never really been able to figure out how to get stains out. And so...

All of my entire family is just always walking around with, like, something on their clothes. The whole process, I will say, is very intimidating, Kyra. It's a myth. Don't even ask me. I don't know. It's a myth. My mom taught me how to, like, separate lights from darks. And it's not the 1920s. I feel like we don't need to do that anymore. And that's where I'm at right now. That's a hot take.

But there's a lot that I don't know. Yeah. And you know what? That's why I'm really glad we have our special guest today. Because we are Wirecutter. We do happen to have someone on staff whose entire job it is to think about laundry, test laundry solutions, and basically give great advice about laundry.

Andrea Barnes is a staff writer and industry expert in all things laundry, and she's going to join us to tell us the best laundry products and how to use them properly. Can't wait. And so listeners know we're going to be dropping links to the guides and products we talk about in this episode and all our episodes right in the show notes. So if you hear us talk about something and want to know more, just head over there.

Does Ty live up to the hype? Do we need to use hot water on our dirty clothes? Can anything get cooking oil stains out of my favorite t-shirt? We'll find out in just a minute.

The Wirecutter Show is supported by Polestar. Polestar 3 is ushering in a new generation of electric SUVs, one that relies on designing technology so integrated you forget it's even there. That's the ethos behind Polestar 3's custom-developed Android Automotive OS. So when you're in the driver's seat, you'll experience an intuitive infotainment screen, smart voice controls, and over-the-air updates to keep your Polestar on the cutting edge every day.

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You can join me every weekday morning for the headlines from The New York Times. Now we're about to see a spectacle that we've never seen before. To show that catches you up on the biggest news stories of the day. I'm here in West Square. We'll put you on the ground where news is unfolding. I just got back from a trip out to the front line and every soldier... And bring you the analysis and expertise you can only get from The Times newsroom. I just can't emphasize enough how extraordinary this moment is. Look for The Headlines wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back with Andrea Barnes. Andrea is Wirecutter's premier expert on big home appliances like dishwashers and washing machines, but we're not even really going to focus on that today. All of her appliance testing has also led her to become our expert on all things laundry. She's written a ton of our most popular guides and articles in the category, like for detergent, washing your tennis shoes, washing things by hand.

and stain removal. Hi, Andrea. Hi, it's nice to be here. Nice to see you. So Andrea,

does a ton of laundry and tests out different washers and dryers and obviously detergents. And the Wirecutter office is this just massive space in Long Island City. You know, there's like weird clothing hanging everywhere that's stained with like egg and lipstick and grass and obviously like lots of detergent all over the place on carts. And I don't know, it's like this weird Willy Wonka's chocolate factory of laundry over there.

I want to know what you're doing because I feel really undereducated on the topic. But first, you're testing our laundry IQ today with a quiz so you can judge our baseline on how much or little we might know about what's coming up. It's really like how little we know. We're going to come in humble.

Yes, I have a little true-false quiz for you. So question one, true or false, soda water is the best thing to remove a fresh red wine stain. True! I am gonna... I was so enthusiastic about that. I love it. So somebody spilled red wine all over me at my wedding, and I was wearing a white wedding dress, and my mom's best friend, who's an amazing laundress, she, like, got it out with soda water. Laundress? She swooped in and she was like, I got this. Is it true? Yeah, she was like, we are doing this. Yeah. Well...

I'm glad that that worked, but I would actually say false according to our testing. Oh, no. I'm sure that soda water can work, but we found that the best thing for fresh red wine stains is actually white wine. What? Oh, wow. So you pour white wine on top of the red wine? Exactly. And it just cancels out? It cancels it out. Well, I mean, I did drink a whole bottle of white wine after that person spilled the red wine on me and the stain did come out, so it did kind of work. That always works. Arguably for different reasons. Yeah.

All right. Question two. What do you got? True or false? A top load washer cleans better than a front load washer. True? No, it's false. Even though they use less water, actually a front load washer is way better at removing stains than a top load washer.

It doesn't have that little thingy in the middle, though. I know. It's really confusing, but it's actually the friction that really makes the front load washer work. It's the friction, not the thingy. Wow. Yeah. Who knew? Science. Yeah. Okay, next. Okay, so you need fabric softener. True or false? False. You are correct. It is false. It's actually just fat that's usually added to the end of a cycle. Oh. Fat? What? Yeah, it's fat. We actually used to use it in college to condition our hair. Oh, my gosh.

I wouldn't say do it now, but it worked really well. The olden times were wild. Absolutely wild. I love it. Okay, so the last question. In order to get stains out, you need to wash with hot water. This has to be true. No, it's actually not. What if my cat puked on my bed? Especially cat puke should be washed with cold water. Stop it. Oh, my gosh. Really? Yes, because it has protein in it, and protein needs...

cold water to be washed out. Wait, so have I just been baking it deeper into my comforter? You may have. Did the smell go away when you did it? Or, you know, Kyra. No.

I would like to think so, but who knows? I have so many, like, candles lit at all times. I mean, warm water will get it out and friction helps, but, you know, cold water is definitely more efficient. All right. Well, I think Andrea proved our point. We have some laundry tips and knowledge that we need to acquire ASAP. Yeah, I think that's about right. Okay, so...

Let's get into it, Andrea. I want to start with getting a better sense of how you even test something like laundry detergent. Oh, that's a great question. You know, initially when we, when I started designing the laundry detergent tests, the idea was to put common stains on t-shirts. I

I pulled the Wirecutter writers and asked them, what are the worst stains you've had? What are the things that have been hardest to remove? And most of them were pretty typical, like lipstick, ink, cooking oil. And we stained all these shirts. We very quickly realized that it

it's actually very hard to recreate difficult stains. And that most of the stains that you recreate, especially because they're only sitting for a day or two before you wash them, almost everything was pretty easy to wash out. And so when you say recreate, are you taking a bottle of Heinz and just mushing it into some new t-shirt? Totally, exactly. And so with that in mind,

I called one of my sources, who's a former washing machine developer from Whirlpool. And I asked him, what would you do in this situation? Because everything is cleaning out pretty easily. And he said, you've got to call Clorox and get their standardized test. And he described this swatch with 15 different stains on it that are all the same size. And he

Clorox, of course, was not going to give me that. Right. So but I did find the place that Clorox buys it from, which is a which is a German company that has a dealer in Pennsylvania. So to order these swatches, we actually have to email them and give them the credit card information and all this stuff like we can't even do it online. It took forever. Right.

But this machine is awesome because it uses the exact same amount of whatever the stain material is, and it presses them down under thousands of pounds of pressure. So you have a standardized stain set. And the stains are pretty typical stains you encounter in daily life. So there's tea...

There's mustard. There's something that's called beta carotene, which is more like a carrot or a sweet potato stain. Then there are some that you're not necessarily encountering every day. Like there's one that's used engine oil, which...

You know, we joked about going to find a mechanic who would give us oil rags, but this seemed like a better solution. But the idea here is not to remove all of the stain. It's actually really just comparative data. What it does is it shows us how good a laundry detergent or stain remover is by how much stain they remove. So the idea really isn't to see a blank T-shirt or a blank piece of jersey cotton at the end. It really is to see...

some stain left. I don't want to turn anybody's stomach, but I'm very, very curious because I think a comment, especially if you have kids...

My kids fall and scrape their knees all the time. Oh, yeah. Blood. Oh, yeah. Yes. I'm afraid to ask. I became very good friends with the butchers at Paisano's on Smith Street in Brooklyn, where they sell both pork and beef blood for different recipes. And I bought, I think we probably, between laundry detergent testing and stain remover testing, I think I probably bought six quarts of blood. Ooh.

Are you on some sort of list? Probably. I know. I've been wondering about that. Do they know what you want the blood for? They probably just think I'm making a recipe, but...

I think for testing, we left several t-shirts overnight for three or four days after being stained with blood. That was actually one of the best tests. Like, some things that could get those stains out were good detergents or good stain removers. Yeah, I'm just seeing, like, a Carrie scene at the office. Like, isn't that what they used? That movie actually was about a girl, I think, who was in training to become a detergent tester. Yeah.

That's a little known fact. Something that I personally, I don't know about the rest of you, but I just use liquid detergent because it's what I buy and that's what I use. And I don't really do anything else. But from reading your work, it sounds like there is a difference between liquid and powder and when you want to use those. So can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. I mean, I think for most people...

liquid detergent is probably the best choice. I mean, there are great products on the market, and most people are removing body oils from their clothing, and a lot of people aren't actually removing that many stains from their clothing. I mean, honestly, the water itself does a lot of the work too, right? If

You have a job where you're outdoors a lot and you're working a lot with clay or mud or particulate soils is what they would be called. Powder detergent is probably a better choice because powder detergent is going to...

work with those stains better because of the way it's formulated. And also, if you just have a lot of stains in your clothes in general, powder detergent's a nice choice because most of them have oxygen bleach or some other sort of non-chlorine bleach built into them. So there's a little bit more stain-roofing power. And you can use those on all colored fabric? That's okay? Totally different than chlorine bleach, which is not safe to use on all sorts of fabrics. But oxygen bleach is

It's basically hydrogen peroxide. So you're going to want to test a small part of your clothing to make sure that it can withstand the oxygen bleach. But we have yet to run into something unless it's like a really poorly dyed item that can't be used with oxygen bleach. Like the most famous oxygen bleach is like OxyClean, right? Yes. And we tested it. We didn't love it in testing. Okay. Wow. That guy was lying to me in all those infomercials.

One of the great infomercials. Watch how OxyClean unleashes the power of oxygen, making tough stains disappear like magic. OxyClean didn't do great in testing because it takes a really long time to dissolve. It really needs hot water to dissolve.

And it took a lot longer to remove stains than other detergents that we tested. Well, OxyClean's not a detergent, but we tested Tide Ultra Oxy, which is a powder tied with oxygen bleach, and it did a much better job with removing things than OxyClean did. I think I read in one of your guides that, like, the thing that really picks up stains is just the skin.

thing in it called enzymes, and that's what really, like, eats away at the stains. So you don't really need, like, bleach to get out of stains. No. For most stains, you don't need bleach. I say to use oxygen bleach when it's very specific kinds of stains. Like, basically anything that you would use as a natural dye if you were making dye in your own clothing. So, like, tea, coffee, fruits, things where the stain really changes the fabric versus just

food stains, which are pretty topical and enzymes are really good at getting those. Okay, so we can basically just throw out all of our chlorine bleach and we don't need it. No, not for your regular clothes. You don't need chlorine bleach, but it's still a good disinfectant. And oxygen bleach is for the stains that are really set in and kind of

changing the color of the fabric, right? Like wine or something? Yes. Soaking in oxygen bleach will get the most stubborn stains out, and it's great for things like wine or tea or coffee that really do soak into the fabric and are very hard to get out. So when you say that those, like, oxygen bleaches

detergents are basically just hydrogen peroxide. I know there's always like a DIY community in everything. When there's a product, there's a DIY product. But why can't you just make your own detergent? I mean, you could if you want to spend a lot of time making something that doesn't work as well. That's like a lot of DIY in general, right? Exactly. You were mentioning when we were talking earlier that

This phrase that is a kind of a shorthand that's sometimes helpful, is it something like like, likes, likes? Yes. What is this? It's a solvent term, like, likes, like. So, for example, when you have an oil stain, liquid detergent works really well because the surfactants in liquid detergent behave as an oil, so they are better absorbed into oil stains. So,

Basically, the best way to look at it is that there's water stains and there's oil stains, right? The solvents that you want to use to get rid of those stains are going to be similar in property. So remember I said that if you're working around a lot of clay or dirt, powder detergent is better. That's why.

similar, right? So they behave similarly and they absorb with each other better and combine better. So this is why my kids' muddy, dirty clothing never gets back to zero because it's just like I'm only using liquid and so it's not picking up the dirt, essentially. I mean, you can try pre-treating with a liquid detergent. I find that works really well, but you might...

Just try powder detergent too. It might work. What exactly is the process of pre-treating? So pre-treating a stain is kind of how it sounds. You really are just putting the stain remover or the laundry detergent on the stain beforehand. And it's usually somewhere between five minutes to 20 minutes before you put it in the washing machine. Got it. For almost every stain, if you have laundry detergent on hand, you probably can just use that for pre-treating.

We recommend a different stain remover, all-purpose stain remover for pre-treating called Amidex. But the reason we recommend that is because it removes other stains that laundry detergent is not always good at getting out. So those two are actually makeup and permanent ink. But otherwise, I would say you can pre-treat with laundry detergent for most stains.

And it is a good hack for laundry. So I don't know if any of you have ever had like a marinara stain on your shirt and you don't pre-treat it. You throw it in the wash and then you come out and you still— I've never done it. I've never not treated my stains. Not ever. Never have I forgotten. She's lying, Your Honor. Don't believe me.

Yeah. So, I mean, I will admit to you all that when we were doing laundry detergent testing and one of my sources told me to soak oil stains in warm water and liquid laundry detergent, I was able to get oil stains. You know those dark oil stains you get on colorful fabric? And it'll be like the same. It's just a slightly darker shade. I think my daughter's goal

goal in life is to have every article of clothing have these stains. But I was able to get these stains that had been in three or four washes and dry cycles out from this soaking. So, you know, there are a lot of different things you can do for stain removal. Pre-treating is great, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're totally in trouble if you still have stains coming out of the wash later. Got it.

So I've heard you mention Tide a couple times. Why? And I think both of the powdered detergent, which is which? What is that again? The one that we like? Tide Ultra Oxy. Tide Ultra Oxy. And then the liquid we like is Tide Free and Gentle. Gentle and Free. Gentle and Free. No. Why? Why?

Why? Why do we like Tide? Why is Tide such, I mean, like, we're not shilling for Tide. There is no Tide commercial on this podcast. So what's the deal? You know, it's interesting. I really went into testing wanting to not recommend Tide because I had a lot of misconceptions over being allergic to it. And

And then the more testing that I did and the more research I did, I learned that the ingredient that most people are allergic to in laundry detergent, it's called MI or MCI. It's a chemical preservative. And it's in even, quote unquote, natural liquid detergents. Almost any, all of the ones we tested contain it.

And what's interesting is that people perceive that that's what they're allergic to. One, almost all of it's rinsed off by your washing machine. But the other is that it's the same preservative as probably in your shampoo, your shower gel, anything that you're using that needs to be preserved. So that's actually probably what's causing your allergy. I mean, we talked to multiple dermatologists about this.

So that said, we partly chose Tide Free and Gentle because it doesn't have that preservative. And so they had all this money and all this R&D to go into creating a laundry detergent that lacks these allergens. It was the combination that had hypoallergenic detergent with the fact that it removed stains so well that made it go out on top. So in the end, Tide just kept...

They're doing something really good there. Right. I mean, they have a big budget, right? They have a big budget to spend on R&D, which is something that we kind of find across categories at Wirecutter that, like, we're kind of sometimes surprised. Yeah. The big companies do come out ahead because they just have so much money. I'm kind of relieved when, like, the big names are actually doing something right because then you can get it anywhere. Like, if you run out, you don't... It's very accessible. Liking niche stuff sucks. It's so true. ♪

Okay, so Wirecutter recommends Tide Free and Gentle Liquid Detergent for most laundry. For really stained stuff, dirt stained stuff, Wirecutter recommends Tide Ultra Oxi.

And I trust these recommendations, frankly, based off all of the blood testing and stuff we discussed. Ooh, yes. You know what? I think we're learning. We're doing good, guys. Okay. But I do have some like graduate level questions I need to just throw in here. Like about dry cleaning and pods and just more questions about stains. And how to make eco-friendly choices at the laundromat. But first, a break. The Wirecutter Show is supported by Polestar.

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Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Today, we're getting a masterclass in laundry tips from Andrea Barnes. Andrea is Wirecutter's staff writer on large appliances and all things laundry. So, so far, we've covered some detergent basics, but now we're going to get into some of the nitty-gritty details, literally. Okay, so what if you have really nice or vintage items like cashmere or silk? Do you have to get those dry-cleaned?

Um, it's really going to depend on the item, but I would say the vast majority of the time, no. First of all, you most likely can use regular detergent, Tide Free and Gentle on a lot of your dry clean only items if you use a mesh bag and a gentle cycle. I wouldn't do this with something that you really love, but there are a few other options. We recommend a hand wash detergent called Soak, which is really great. And what you can do is

actually hand wash your garment and you soak the garment with this detergent, which is called Soak, and that's confusing. And it's a no-rinse detergent, so you don't have to handle the clothing for that long, right? So you submerge it.

for 15 minutes, and then you just take the item out and press the water out, and it's ready to go. The detergent evaporates really quickly. Wait, and so you don't have to rinse it? No. Like, what if you have allergies? Like, isn't there something on it that will... So, that's a great question. The preservative we talked about earlier is not in this...

hand wash detergent, which is good. And then we interviewed the owner of the detergent company, and they did third-party testing that showed less than like 0.00005% of the residue is left on the... Because you also use a tiny amount, like we're talking maybe two teaspoons for several gallons. So there's not much left to begin with. I would say that that's ideal for

You know, if you have a cashmere sweater that you've worn a bunch of times and it hasn't really been stained, but you want to freshen it up, that would be a great option. If it's something that's really, you got stains all over it or you bought a vintage item as is, what we learned is that the best thing to do is to use purest.

pure sodium percarbonate, which is oxygen bleach, and soak for hours. So in that case, we wouldn't use something like Tide because there's builders and fillers in it that you won't necessarily want on your clothing. But pure sodium percarbonate is great for soaking your vintage items. And the product we really like for that in testing is called Restoration.

And it's pure oxygen bleach. There's nothing else in it. So OxyClean has fragrance and other fillers in addition to oxygen bleach. And this is just oxygen bleach. How do you test these? How are you testing these vintage? So for this, we did an... I'm not going to give you my keyword search, but... To be honest with you, I don't think I want your keyword search. But I looked for items on eBay...

that are stained. And we ordered a lot of used linens that looked like they had no hope left.

And the craziest part, so we got this huge duvet bag filled with tablecloths and napkins and linens. And they had stains. But the best part slash worst part was that we realized when we opened the bag, when we unzipped it, that the person was definitely a smoker. And it smelled like stale, like cigarettes. Like really, yeah. Not a lot of competing bids. No.

They sent it in 20 seconds after we ordered it. They were like, it's at your door. Check outside.

We were praying you would buy this. So we found this and it was all delicates like lace and linen. Again, I called a source. This time I called our source, Miki Evans, who's amazing. And she is the assistant wardrobe supervisor at The Notebook, the musical on Broadway. Amazing. And yeah, she's great. And she told me about Restoration, this oxygen bleach product that you can buy for soaking vintage items.

So we tried it against, I think, six or seven other oxygen bleaches. And this one was by far the best one. And we felt because it had no fillers was what I would call the least risky one. Did it take out the cigarette smell? It did. It did. Yeah. And we tested a bunch of hand wash detergents with this lot of smoky linens.

And there were definitely some that did not take the stink out. Was that your keyword search? Smoky linens. Smoky linens. Stinky linens. Sounds like an eyeshadow color. Smoky linens. Yeah.

So one thing we actually haven't gotten into is laundry pods. Oh, yeah. We got to talk about laundry pods. We got to talk about the pods. So, Andrea, what's the deal with laundry pods? I initially didn't really want to recommend pods because you can't pre-treat with them. It's so concentrated that it actually doesn't absorb well into stains for pre-treating. So you have to add water and you're dealing with pod films. So all these things make it like not a great choice, in my opinion, for pre-treating. Yeah.

But when we started having paid testers come to the office... And let me just interject. Paid testers are people who are not on our staff that we bring in to test with us. And basically, they're folks who have like a variety of different abilities and body types. And we like to bring them in and get their feedback to get a wider diversity of opinions about the products we're testing. Yes. And some of whom have limited mobility and limited grip strength. I...

observed very quickly that pods were absolutely 100% the best option for them when operating either washing machines or dishwashers. And so it made sense to me to make a recommendation for that. Yeah, that does make sense. I actually had a little revelation because I don't have washer or dryer in my unit, but my partner does. And whenever I go over there, it's like I've never done laundry ever in my life. I'll just toss a pod in the little compartment that they have in those washing machines.

But I've learned recently that you're not supposed to do that. Why is that? It totally depends on the washing machine. But the way the dispenser works is that water goes through the whole thing. And if it's not a very strong stream, it can be very hard for the pot to dissolve. Basically, you need the water to be strong enough to pierce the pot and start everything moving. Got it. Yeah. All right. Doing it wrong.

Okay, you talked a little bit earlier about temperature. And you told us earlier that you're actually supposed to be using cold water. But is there any time that you should be using warm water or hot water? I would say hot water only if you're sanitizing something. Like if you had sheets from someone who was sick. My kids are about to potty train, for instance. Well, see, now pee stains I would say you could do in cold water because urine is pretty sterile.

But like a virus or something like that. Yeah, exactly. I would say hot water is appropriate then. But, you know, one thing people always think they see blood and they assume, oh, I should wash it in hot water. And that's actually a great way to stain your clothing more. You absolutely need cold water for removing blood. Oil stains need warm water. To kind of melt the fat. Yeah, exactly. Well, the warm water emulsifies it, right? Yeah, and lifts it.

What about, like, preserving... I mean, I know because I wash a lot of fabric to sew with, and I know that...

But like I sometimes wash stuff in hot water, but I'm wondering, does that do anything to the color long term if you do wash in warm or hot water? Warm and hot water can definitely degrade and fade dyes faster. Since I've switched to doing cold water washing, I don't see fading on my clothing in the same way that I did before. Yeah.

What about odor? Like, I just, I know that you're saying like pee is okay, even blood is okay, but I just feel like the warm water will take away that smell. Is that totally wrong? No, that's not wrong. And that's why we recommend what we do because the liquid detergents we recommend removed odor even in cold water. I see. How do you do the odor testing? Well, first of all, my informal odor removal testing is having a teenage son.

Oh, yeah. That'll do it. But formally, what we did is we burned...

and used burned bacon grease, which really smells, like really smells terrible. And we stained T-shirts with it and then had a panel of people decide which ones removed the most and which ones smelled the worst. And in testing, the picks we made all removed that odor really well, if not entirely. ♪

Okay, now that we have fully graduated, we almost are at PhD level here with stain fighting. Andrea, I'm curious, you know, if somebody's just really concerned about the environmental impacts of what they're doing in their home and they want to make better choices about their laundry, like, what are the things that they should be doing? That's great. The number one thing I would say to anyone is to wash in cold water when you can. Cold water is...

is just a better choice in terms of energy efficiency. So washing machines have internal heaters that warm the water. And when you wash in hot water, almost all of the energy that's being used in that wash cycle is to heat the water. So when you wash in cold water, you don't use that energy. So that's probably the best thing you can do. I would say air dry when you can. So get a drying rack.

pre-treat stains so that clothing lasts longer and I would use less detergent. When you say less detergent how much do you mean? Yeah you know this is it's interesting this is a tough question because now so many laundry detergent companies are coming out with hyper concentrated detergent but I would say two tablespoons for like a big load. If you if it's not heavily stained yes. You

You know how they give you those caps with the little measuring thing on top and it's like literally a cup? Yeah. In college, I think I was putting two, two and a half cups. Why is my clothing slimy? Oh, yeah, that is what it would be, huh? Yeah. Yeah, you'll get residue and you just don't need that much. It's just unnecessary. And that is how you get allergies because it'll be right up against your skin. Laundry detergent sheets.

No. Okay. They didn't clean well. You might as well just wash with water. Got it. Waste. Okay. But what I'm taking from this is that essentially the best things that you can do from a sustainability lens are also kind of just what's good for your laundry in general. It's going to be the stuff that, you know, gets stains out the best. It's the stuff that...

will keep your clothing nice for longer. And so it's all kind of, it kind of, it's like what's good for your laundry is good for the environment too in that way. Yes, I would agree with that. And that detergent is the Swiss Army knife. Detergent for everything. Use it for everything. Cold water. Andrea, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming. Before we go, we've got one more question and we're going to ask this of all of our guests. What's one thing that you've recently bought that you really love?

It has nothing to do with laundry, but I... She has other interests, guys.

You're breaking my heart. I bought my husband that the grill rescue grill brush that's recommended by our kitchen team. And he really loves this grill brush. And because he loves it, I would say it's the coolest thing I've bought recently. Aw, that's really nice. If you like it, I love it. Andrea, thank you so much. This has been so great. Thank you so much for having me.

Guys, I feel like there are so many takeaways from this segment. I, for one, am going to go on the hunt for some powdered detergent. Oh, yeah. I actually ordered some on Amazon.com because that's where... Can you repeat that? Amazon.com. I think it's the only place that I could find it. I thought they only sold books. No, that's great. Okay, cool, cool.

I think my takeaway was washing cold because apparently I've been baking my cat's puke directly into my bedding. Yeah. I'm going to win that argument with my husband because he's been doing that. So that's a win. But to that point, I also think like you don't need to hunt around for like eco-friendly detergents necessarily if you're trying to be more, you know, earth friendly. It's really just

like energy is kind of the biggest environmental impact. So washing and cold also solves that. Totally. And then like you don't have to go out and hunt for a fancy pretreatment like your laundry detergent that you already have will do just fine. Use what you got. Wash, cold. Yeah. That's right. I think that like you really can just get like two detergents essentially, a liquid and a powder, and you're probably like 95 percent of the way there.

Andrea was a star. She was amazing. I really hope that I can apply this, you know, when I have a machine in my apartment again. I really hope I can get the dirt stains out of my kids' clothes finally. Godspeed, my friends. And that's it for us this week. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage on laundry detergent or snag the products we recommended today, go to nytimes.com backslash Wirecutter or find a link in the show notes.

So if you like The Wirecutter Show, which we all hope you do, right? I think people are actually going to listen to this. I hope so. I hope people are listening right now. And if they're listening, maybe they'll follow us. Yeah. Or leave a review. A hopefully nice one. We'll always read the reviews. Even if it's mean, I guess. It also helps other people find the show. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Thank you for listening either way.

The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Editing by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Maciello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alisha Ba'itoub, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.

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