I’m old, but i don’t, really. I separate stuff i want to wash in hot water from everything else. The socks and underwear (both of which come in both black and white) get washed in hot, along with enough other stuff that’s sturdy and light-colored to make a load, and everything else goes in the other load.
When i was young, dyes weren’t nearly as good, and if you threw something black or red into the wash with light colored clothes, the light colored clothes would end up gray or pink. But i haven’t had that issue in years.
:heynow: back in the old days I think that they would get cleaner. These days soaps/detergents are so good that it probably doesn’t matter…but I’m pretty much making that all up.
She is obsessive over sorting her laundry. I think her mom would drive 1200 miles to beat her if she caught wind that my wife didn’t do such sorting.
I just chuck stuff in whenever I have enough to justify a load (or after working outside in parts of our property where ticks are a risk) without regard to what the load consists of.
My father’s wardrobe looked a little like that, after the first time he did laundry after my mother passed. (She had handled such matters for him for 50 years / he hadn’t done his own laundry since he was in the Army.)
Pretty sure my wife sorts white versus colors, plus a few other ways.
I generally sort whites from colors and I also sort things that go in the dryer versus things that get line dried. If I am switching a load I don’t want to have to go through it to figure out what can and can’t go in the dryer while they are wet, it is easier for me to separate it first. Pretty much all of our workout clothes plus a laundry list of nicer clothes (mostly belonging to my wife) don’t go in the dryer, and we have a washer that auto-adjusts water level and cycle time based on load size, so while we have plenty to make decent size loads it doesn’t matter too much if one is one the small size.
It makes me feel powerful. I once accidentally spray-painted a towel (black paint on white), so I washed it in hot water with Clorox, not caring if it lived or died. Stain came out, no visible damage.
To answer the OP, I wash my white socks in hot water and my black socks in warm water. That’s the only separation I do based solely on color.
My understanding is exactly the opposite… that, insofar as getting your clothes (and dishes in the dishwasher) clean the detergents are actually considerably worse. The older detergents contained environmentally harmful ingredients that are no longer legal to use, but they did a better job of getting the clothes (or dishes) clean.
Slightly compensating is that the dishwashers and washing machines do a better job, but my understanding is that it’s still a net negative.
If you could somehow get ahold of some circa 1990 Tide (via a time machine so it hadn’t been degrading for 33 years) and use it in today’s washing machine you’d have the holy grail of clothes cleanliness. But the EPA might come after you.
I separate whites. For a while my husband did not and his white shirts got dingy. He bought all new white shirts and started separating and they are staying much whiter.
I separate into four categories though:
whites (hot water and color-safe bleach)
sort-of whites (cool water and color-safe bleach)
reds (cold water)
darks (cold water)
Sort-of whites is a broad category that includes yellows, lighter khakis, stuff that has both white and dark colors in the same garment (a navy blue & white striped shirt, for example).
Reds is anything that is predominantly red, pink, orange or purple. This is more to keep the darks from making the reds dingy than fear of the reds turning the darks other colors. Darker purples can go with either the reds or the darks depending on which load has more room in it.
Occasionally I’ll do a load of all delicates, but mostly they go into garment bags and go in the load corresponding to their color and then I pull the garment bag(s) out before the load goes into the dryer and hang them to air dry.
