We’ve all done it, haven’t we? You bring down all the washing that needs doing, and you sort it into whites and colours. Then you start loading up your machine.
But you realise that there is really a bit too much for one full load of washing. What you should really do is to break that load into two lots. But that would mean either having two lighter loads, or one decent load and some clothing left over that could really do with being washed.
So what do you do? The chances are you decide to squeeze everything in together.
It happens, of course. But there is more than one downside to doing this, so you should think carefully before doing it in future.
First of all you will find that your clothes don’t wash as effectively if you pile more in than you should do. The water and detergent cannot get everywhere it needs to, and so you will find that stains don’t come out quite as well. You might even have to wash some of them again – which certainly defeats the purpose of trying to get everything in at once anyway!
Another disadvantage to doing this is that washing machines are designed to take only a certain amount of clothing in order to work effectively. This really follows on from the previous point. However they are designed and whatever special features they might have, they will only work if we don’t ask too much of them.
It might be tempting to try and be good to the environment and only do one load of washing instead of two. But if you have to wash things again anyway it doesn’t work well, does it?
In addition to this modern machines are also more ‘intelligent’ than their predecessors. Many of them have a facility called ‘fuzzy logic’. This enables them to make sure that the minimum amount of water is used for each wash. They ensure that enough is used to attain the best results, but it won’t be more than is needed. This means that if you put in a half load, the machine will ‘know’ that it should use less water than it would on a full load. The electricity used will be more of course, but sometimes we have to do more than one load.
And the other aspect to bear in mind is that overloading your washing could end up damaging it permanently. And if you do that, you certainly won’t be helping the environment as another old appliance is ditched.
So you see, overloading your machine is not a good idea in any sense. It is tempting to do it, but you won’t get the best results if you do. So from now on, always stop and think before you actually go ahead and squeeze more clothing into that machine. It might just backfire on you if you aren’t careful.
If in doubt, check the instructions that came with your machine originally. They will tell you what the maximum load is.