Laundromats/Self-Service Laundry

Don't have a washer and dryer? Are you tired of waiting for a machine in your apartment's facilities...the one with 3-4 machines for 200 tenants? Cart it all to a nearby laundry facility.

Little known fact: Laundromat is actually a service mark for a commercial establishment equipped with washing machines and dryers, usually coin-operated and self-service. It should be capitalized, but often occurs in print in lowercase.

Dry Cleaners

  • Put your drycleaners here - Where in Sac are they?

Laundry

Basic Laundry:

These are your everyday jeans & tee shirts. Socks, boxers, underwear, that sort of thing. this is a helpful site

Tips

Anyone have any tips on doing laundry? Have you found shortcuts or "poor man's" methods?

  • Ladies, get mesh bags for bras; Target, Wal-Mart, etc. Close the back of your bras and wash them in the mesh bag, they won't snag other clothes. And DO NOT put bras in the dryer. I'm guessing you all knew that, but you can never be too sure.
  • Don't feel you have to use as much laundry detergent as the instructions on the package say. Use about 1/4 - 1/2 that amount - experiment and see what works well for you. Using as much as they say will just leave a lot of potentially irritating residue and cause you to go through the detergent faster than necessary.
  • Hang dry clothing when possible to save energy, money, and wear and tear on the clothing. Also, when using the dryer, try not to dry the clothing all the way to burnt hot dry. Try to dry them to where the waist bands of heavier things are still damp. This also eases up the wear and tear on the clothes.
  • Running the washer on COLD/COLD saves energy and money.
  • Buy detergent without dyes or fragrances to minimize impact on local ecosystems.
  • If you need quarters for the machines, try the change machines at the MU Games Area on campus. They always have a huge supply. When the quarters drop it's like you hit a jackpot.

Delicates & Handwashing

These are delicate items like silk, cashmere, chenille, some lingerie.

  1. You'll need a basin/container/sink, two is preferred. Many places have two kitchen sinks, that's a great place to wash delicates

  2. One basin will have warm water with a little bit of soap for washing, use laundry soap made for delicates, as most are too harsh, or use a very small amount. The other will be cooler water with no soap for rinsing.

  3. Do lighter colored items first, that way when you rinse, you won't have dark water. You can change the rinsing water whenever you want.

  4. Spot treat any spots on your items, with a high concentration of soap and a toothbrush.

  5. Do one thing at a time, put your item in the warm soapy basin, and agitate it by gently swishing it around with your hand. You may even want to let it soak for a little bit.

  6. Ring it out by gently folding your item, don't twist, and push up against a wall of the basin to push water out.

  7. Move it to the cooler water basin and swish it around like you did in the other basin.

  8. You won't need to let it sit in the cool water, make sure the soap is gone and set it out to dry. Some items need to be "reshaped" like sweaters, but in most cases you can reshape and lay on ironing or drying board. Any flat surface will do.

  9. Hooray, you've washed your own clothes!

Laundry Machine Repair

Looking at this page because your washingmachine or dryer are on the fritz? * List Laundry Machine Repair here...

This page was a cribbed from and modified version of the Laundry page on DavisWiki. Share and share alike.

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