How to sort laundry

Color is the highest-stakes sort because dye transfer is often permanent. Split into three groups: whites and very light pastels; medium colors; and darks (navy, black, dark gray, deep red). Established medium colors are flexible — they can usually join either neighbors' load in cold water.

• Whites and very light: wash together, away from everything saturated.
• Medium and mixed colors: wash together in cold.
• Darks and brights: wash together in cold; inside out slows fading.
• Anything NEW and colored is its own category — treat it as a bleeder for the first few washes, whatever pile it will eventually live in. See preventing color bleeding.

Within a color group, the practical question is whether sturdy items will damage fragile ones. Heavy items with hardware — jeans, hoodies with zippers, work clothes — abrade and snag thin knits, lace, mesh, and anything with straps.

• Sturdy: denim, sweatshirts, towels, work clothes — normal or heavy-duty cycle.
• Average: t-shirts, casual trousers, most everyday clothing — normal cycle.
• Fragile: bras, lace, tights, silk, loose knits — delicate cycle, ideally in a mesh laundry bag, or hand wash.

If a fragile item has to share with average items, the load runs on the fragile item's terms: gentlest cycle, coldest water in play.

Heavily soiled items — muddy sports gear, greasy work clothes, anything a pet was sick on — wash separately from lightly worn clothing. Mixed together, the wash water carries soil that can redeposit on cleaner items, and the lightly soiled clothes don't need the aggressive cycle the dirty ones do.

Items that hold a lot of water (towels, bath mats, bedding, heavy cotton) dry on a completely different clock from t-shirts and synthetics. Washing them together is survivable; drying them together means over-dried clothes or damp towels. Keep towels and bedding as their own loads end to end, or at least split at the dryer.

• New, saturated colors — until they stop bleeding.
• Heavily soiled or greasy items.
• Hygiene loads: cloth diapers, pet bedding, cleaning rags and mop pads.
• Microfiber cleaning cloths — cotton lint ruins them. See washing microfiber cloths.
• Bulky single items: comforters and weighted blankets, which need the whole drum.

For a typical household, the sort settles into: one whites/lights load, one darks load, one towels load, and bedding on rotation. Delicates accumulate in a mesh bag until there's enough for a small gentle cycle. If a pile is genuinely mixed and small, run it cold on a normal cycle — cold water is the great equalizer, and the checker can tell you if anything in the pile truly can't share.