Is separating laundry colours dated practice?

I appreciate you 😀. I mean if I have my white quilt cover on my bed then I'll save up my couple of white tops etc and put them in the washing machine, but it seems wasteful to do a wash for 3 small items and you are correct - they are whiter than snow .

A colour catcher. I am anal about separating into colour groups - I even do a grey wash - and if I have a conundrum item I use a colour catcher just in case.

My mum used to do this 🙂 and yes it works great!

I have several lines in my basement that I’ll hang things on because in the winter they’ll dry super quick because the furnace is on and it’s really dry in the house. It honestly helps keep the humidity up in the house to do it. I think I line dry more than average though but it’s all inside. I never got around to putting up a line in the yard when we bought our house. But I grew up with one outside and had a makeshift one in our old apartment.

But yeah I’ve come to realize our dryers aren’t the same. Which is funny because when I lived in Scotland we had an industrial/high capacity washer and dryer which seemed to work very similar to ours, so I think those may work different than your home versions?

Front load washers are becoming the norm. But they will have to pry my 20 yo top loader out of my cold dead hands. I don’t want smart anything when it comes to that appliance.

I like to be able to tweak how I wash clothes… see the woolens as an example. I can get the right water temp for both wash and rinse by standing there during the water fill cycle and adjusting the temp knob from cold to warm to get tepid. And now modern washing machine (including mine) allows for nothing but a cold rinse, which I get around by using the main wash cycle setting on the knob to fill the water (at my desired temp) and then switching back to the rinse cycle when it’s filled with water.

That's the way! Stuff lasts longer. We also have a rule that pockets must be emptied by the wearer as they are put in the basket

I do a white wash, then everything else goes in together.

My mom and my grandma did it, it's an old practice but works well! No, it doesn't make you strange, you're just following tried and true tradition.

I separate my laundry, but occasionally there is a mishap. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned bluing - I add a very small amount to my whites/lights and it refreshes them. It's very old school and you have to be careful not to overdo it, but it works!
I also always use color catchers, but I'm not really sure that they make a big difference.

I don’t see the problem with separating.
Why just bung everything in together?

It makes no sense.

To those who are saying they don’t care of their child’s uniform or clothing is dingy. Believe me, they will care, maybe not now, but one day.

I do whites/very pale separately as it keeps them white for longer, anyway have too much for just one wash!

I still do it, no idea if I need too but happy to continue

I just use colour run sheets, to stop anything getting marked. It saves having to run extra loads which saves on time and electricity so win win!

Always separate.

I’m the same, I do wash them with pale greys too as I have a lot of grey too!

I spend a lot of time in the US so when you said you were there I knew you would mention the dryer. I always have to buy an airer when we’re staying and take pegs with me. I dry my washing outside but do get strange looks from the neighbours. Your machines are also huge! It took me a while to get used to the top loaders too.
Interesting, the differences.

Oh yes reds can always be tricky.....

Depends on each item. New black socks can run, and anything made of natural fibres can do - I always wash by hand once before chucking certain items in the mixed wash. Also cheaper Asian cottons etc - I have some lovely bright coloured cotton dresses that I wash by hand even years later.

But no - mostly modern stuff is fine, especially man made fibres/mixes - school uniform black trousers and white shirts are fine together etc. MIL was horrified when my machine broke down and I took a mixed load to her - she couldn't believe I mixed whites and coloureds! (There was also a pale green towel in there - she said ' ha, look, that's not white any more!' I'm sure she didn't believe me that it never had been......😂)

I put the beige and taupe in the whites. But I don’t boil/hot wash the whites anymore as some of the white bras were going grey and o read somewhere that washing them too hot causes this. So they go in with the whites and I also add in the banish mix white powder.

I have a lot of beigey/taupey clothes and I wash them as their own little group. They're kind of the odd man out, they don't fit in with whites or colours.

I admire the bravery on here of those mixing and hoping for the best!
I worry so much about shortening the life of clothes that I separate everything - towels, red tones (pink red yellow etc), whites, dark (now 2 separate washes of dark darks and lighter darks like blues and greens), bedding, fine wash for delicates.
My issue right now is what to wash beige and taupe with - if it goes in the red wash it goes reddy/pink; if it goes in the dark wash it comes out it comes out somewhat lifeless. Any ideas?

No i separate, I can always tell when people haven't separated their whites.....

I do darks, colours, whites, towels & bedding. Sometimes combine white towels/bedding & clothes to make a full wash.
2 adults, 2 kids so always enough to make a full load

whites, brights, darks, bedding and finally towels.
we have enough to do them like that though

Holy moly I separate - my husbands red work hoody destroyed a lot of our clothes 😂

I do sheets, duvet covers and pillow cases together. 1 load of just towels every week. 1 load of whites mainly for cricket clothes but cricket season now come to an end so I might get away with 1 white load a fortnight. At least 2 dark loads each week and 1 load of dark sports wear on a sports wash. There is only 3 of us but teen makes loads of washing

I separate washes into:

• Mine
• DHs
• DCs
• Bedding
• Towels/white wash
• 60° tea towels
• Everything else