Did you know that there are basic hygiene rules for doing laundry?

Did I hear you say, ‘seriously’? Isn’t it enough that I want to do the laundry? Now there are rules of hygiene for that too? Well, I’m sorry to say…yes there are. Think you’re doing your laundry well? Think your family is protected because you wash every day. Let’s do a reality check. Here are our top five tips to prevent the spread of germs through laundry.

• Wash dirty clothes as soon as possible. The longer the germs are allowed to breed on the clothes, the more difficult it will be to get rid of all of them in one wash. This is even worse for damp clothes like towels for obvious reasons and do I need to explain why this also applies to underclothes too?
• Sort the laundry before washing. Apart from ensuring that the clothes are sorted according to colour and thus, do not run the risk of staining other clothes, this also ensures that delicate clothing are separated. Panties, underpants, children’s clothes and towels should generally be washed differently.
• As much as possible use warm water (about 40 degrees centigrade) to wash your clothes. This also provides an impossible temperature for the germs to thrive.
• Lots of people of people would wash their hands after handling very dirty laundry for the simple reason that their hands feel dirty afterwards. But would it readily cross your mind to wash your hands after handling your load of just washed laundry…supposedly squeaky clean? No. But there are still germs swimming all around the surface…so you should get your hands washed.
• Ensure that your clothes dry thoroughly before you wear them apart from the dead rat smell of those damp clothes people wear, germs are likely to still be on them. In fact, this is one of those places where modern technology appears to win the competition with old tested and trusted. Using a tumble dryer gets the clothes dry faster and lots the time available for germs to thrive. Air drying on the other hand promotes the growth of germs as the clothes remain damp for a longer time before drying.

There you go…even the laundry must be done just so!

Here’s to a healthier you!