Everyone has their own process for doing laundry. Maybe they do it every three days or maybe they wait a week. Maybe someone uses Tide and the other uses Bounty. One thing’s for sure though: Everyone separates their whites from their darks, right?
That’s how they did it back in the day, right? Always washing the whites first—T-shirts, underwear, socks—and then all the colorful stuff. That way, the dark colors don’t bleed into the whites, causing them to take on the tint of other pieces in your wardrobe.
However, the act of separating laundry is actually quite the time-consuming, annoying task. And because of that, a lot of us forgo that step in laundry and simply throw in a blue shirt with a white top and live on the edge.
One woman named Melissa Locker discovered this after someone in her family threw a red towel in with a white one, causing the white towel to take on a light pink shade. She couldn’t believe anyone would ever be that careless to not separate the two in the load.
“Growing up, we kids were given strict instructions on separating laundry into lights and darks, whites were given a special hot water treatment, and there was a stern warning about reds and their ability to bleed color,” Melissa stated in an article on Southern Living. “As an adult, I more or less followed the same instructions and separated the colors. According to a tweet that went viral, it turns out my laundry habits may be anachronistic, a throwback to an earlier time.”
However, she came across a viral tweet that showed that perhaps she was one of the few left who separates her laundry.
On August 1, @ZachSilberberg tweeted the following: “yall wanna talk about generational divides? i dont know anyone under 40 who separates laundry into lights and darks.” Over 435,000 people liked the tweet!
Additionally, another Twitter user @McKenzieDewese asked the public a relevant poll question: “If you’re under 40, pls answer: Do you separate your dark and light laundry?”
The result? Over 48 percent responded no, they don’t separate. That’s nearly half!
People had some decent reasons for their lack of laundry separation, the most common answers being they a) wash everything in cold water to avoid color bleeding, b) it gets expensive running so many loads, and c) it’s too much effort for something that doesn’t matter that much (e.g., they don’t really care).
We have to know: Do you separate your dark and light laundry, or just combine the two and hope for the best?