Let's start at the beginning. Sorting This is the very first step. Most major laundry dramas (such as the white laundry suddenly turning pink) can be prevented by proper sorting. White should not be mixed with very bright colours and black. Unless your coloured items are colour-fast.

Colour fastness can be checked by rubbing the fabric with a slightly wet white handkerchief. Does your white handkerchief show signs of discolouration? Then the material is not colour-fast. If they are, you can safely wash the colours together, at the right temperature. You can check this on the label.

• Do you have a little bit of everything (a whole week's laundry)?
• Check whether there are delicate fabrics or items that should not be washed in your laundry. Naturally, these should be removed.
• Does your wash contain jeans? Then make sure any paper tissues have not been left in the pockets. If you don't do this, you’ll end up with a machine full of torn tissue fragments, and will have to start again.
• Close the zips and buttons of your jeans. Otherwise, the teeth of the zip could damage your other laundry.
• Turn your jeans inside out to protect your coloured items.
• Unroll the sleeves of your shirts and unroll your socks and stockings. After all, you want them to be clean when they come out of the machine.
• Put your underwear in a lingerie bag. This will keep the items intact.
• Put everything in the machine.
• Select a 40°C cotton program (if recommended by the washing instructions on all the labels)

TIP : Why 40°C? Most of the dirt (sweat, sebum, etc.) in your clothes accumulates at body temperature (37 to 38°C). This means we're going to wash them at a slightly higher temperature, so that everything comes loose again. It doesn’t have to be much hotter, unless you’re washing kitchen towels or dirty underwear, in which case 60°C can be selected to kill all the bacteria.

It's as simple as that! You can find more information in our book “Trek je plan!” (How it’s done). (p. 39)