Cleaning a couple clothes that require cold wash

Question

I generally do my laundry using hot water as it cleans the clothing best. However I have some clothing for sports that can only be washed in cold water. I only have two or three of these items and it seems very wasteful to do a separate load just for them. Any suggestions?

I have a bathing suit that I wash by hand and only sometimes put in the wash. I have a special cleaning solution of this that removes chlorine. However I have a pair of running pants that should be washed each time (they get very sweaty and muddy). But it seems wasteful to put just one item in the laundry.

Answer 1

I usually do a "rinse only" cycle in the washing machine, because it uses only cool water. Additionally it's really fast and cut down of the wear of your clothes skipping useless spinning.

I also like to do this for normal loads. I use soap in one cycle (machine on rinse only mode) and every once in a while put it through a second cycle set to hot - just to make sure it's not building up anything nasty. I find this to be very efficient.

I also like to use a natural soap instead of detergent, and just vinegar when I do a second cycle. Can't really trust that detergents don't have toxic chemicals these days.

Answer 2

These days, they claim, cold or at least lukewarm water is doing the cleaning of clothes well enough with the detergents made for it.

So your solution, those times when you have to do the cold wash items, you wash your whole load cold.

I have to admit I did not trust it myself till I started keeping the temperature on the washing machine cold.

Only when I have a very dirty load of cotton whites I do let the temperature go to 50C (about halfway the scale,) with a dedicated 'whites' detergent.