I have had a couple of instances where I'm washing bedlinens and I find the spin cycle is stuck because everything has ended up packed inside one duvet cover and the machine can't balance the drum.
Is there a way to bunch duvet covers up in a way that minimizes the risk of this happening?
I normally fasten a few of the buttons/poppers of the duvet cover before loading it, this usually stops anything from getting inside the cover itself.
As for a large item tending to gather smaller items into a ball, I think this is something I used to see with old-fashioned machines decades ago, but any machine designed in the last 20 years will normally have clever tricks to minimise this sort of "bunching" by reversing the drum etc to even-out the load. My current machine (Bosch) will actually refuse to spin the wash if it determines that it can't be balanced. This only rarely happens with washing an actual duvet rather than just a cover.
In a top loading washing machine, put in two similar duvet covers on opposite sides of the drum, and nothing else. In a front loading machine you might be able to do just one duvet cover (and nothing else). Wash your sheets and pillow cases in a separate load.
