How do I fix the laundry problems I keep having?

Seven pages, seven problems, and several of them turn out to be caused by something applied or added rather than by the fabric wearing out.

Your towels stopped working because of what you put on them. Why your towels stopped drying you says the usual conclusion, that the towels are old, is much more often wrong: something has been applied to them. Fabric softener works by leaving a coating; its softening agents carry a positive charge and cotton carries a negative one, so they latch on as a thin, waxy, water-repelling layer. That layer is what makes the fabric feel soft, and it is exactly a layer that repels water. A towel does not absorb in some general way, it draws water along the fibres by capillary action, so the film does not damage the towel, it switches off the mechanism. The part that catches out people who already knew all that: a dryer sheet is fabric softener, the same class of coating delivered a different way, so stopping the liquid while still throwing in a sheet only changed the applicator. If you want something in the rinse, plain white vinegar softens and cuts detergent residue without laying anything down, in the softener dispenser so it goes in at the rinse, in a small amount; putting it in with the detergent mostly cancels both, which is why people try it once and decide it does nothing. To strip a coating already there, a hot wash with plain dish soap or a degreaser and no detergent, then a normal wash. And check anything technical, because sports gear wicks on exactly the mechanism the coating blocks. The page’s safety lines: never let vinegar meet bleach, which includes detergents with bleach in them, because the two give off chlorine gas; and in flammability testing, liquid softener in the rinse made all-cotton fleece, terry cloth and velour burn faster, which is a reason to keep it off children’s nightwear in particular. On everything besides towels the page carries an argument with no winner, and what decides it is your water, your air, and whether you would rather a load worked or smelled of something.

The lint in the trap is your clothes. The lint in the trap is your clothes reframes the tumble-dryer argument, which is always about electricity: the electricity is the smaller number, and the fabric ground off a load at a time is what fades colour, pills the surface and tires the elastic. If money is tight, a t-shirt that lasts years is worth more than the kilowatt-hours. Two complaints stop people and both have answers. Stiffness is mostly fibres drying matted flat, so shake each item out hard before it goes on the line, and the compromise people landed on is a short tumble with no heat at the end. Time and space is a folding rack, and what decides whether it works is airflow, because the same rack in a shut room takes days and with a window cracked is done overnight. Lay knits flat rather than hanging them. The page’s safety line: drying a full load indoors in a room with no airflow puts litres of water into the air, and in a home prone to condensation that grows mildew on the walls and a smell into the fabric that does not wash out.

Shoe smell is alive, which is why covering it never works. The smell is alive says shoes do not smell, bacteria do, and shoes are where they live: warm, dark, damp, restocked with sweat every day you wear them. Anything that lasts either dries the shoe out or kills what is in it. That sorts every remedy: tea bags get wildly opposite reviews and both are true, because dry tea absorbs some moisture and adds a scent without killing anything; the freezer knocks the smell back and it returns as the shoes warm. The move people keep arriving at is the least satisfying, a full day to dry before wearing them again, about twenty-four hours, which a shoe worn every day never gets, so two pairs in rotation solves what no spray solves. If a second pair is out of reach, pull the insoles and stand the shoes somewhere airy the moment you take them off. For a synthetic trainer, not leather, isopropyl alcohol sprayed inside kills the colony outright, and may need doing more than once.

A musty washer is one that stays wet: leave the door open after the last load, and the detergent drawer too, unless a cat or small child can reach the machine. Leave the washer door open so the drum dries says many people who have been through this point at damp rather than dirt: a closed, wet drum is where mould grows. Many people say leaving the door or lid open lets the moisture escape, and that the drawer should be left open as well, because residue builds up there. On a front-loader, some people say water sits in the folds of the rubber seal, and wiping it dry clears the water, hair and lint that help mould grow. Some people warn that laundry left sitting in the drum goes sour: one person puts the limit at a couple of hours, another says never overnight. Many people say using less detergent than the bottle recommends prevents the soap scum that feeds mould. Look inside the drum before every cycle. Some people warn that a cat can climb into an open washer and be hurt when the machine starts, so if a cat or small child can reach the machine, keep the door shut and wipe the seal dry instead; one person says the machine’s own built-in cleaning cycle is a way to cope when the door has to stay shut, and another runs an empty hot cycle with a cleaning product once a month. One person warns that on a front-loader an open door can ruin the rubber seal, others leave it only slightly open, and the page cannot settle it for your machine, so your manual comes first. If it already smells, many people suggest an empty hot cycle with white vinegar and some prefer bleach, and people argue about which works better. The page’s safety line is that you pick one and never mix bleach with vinegar, or with any other cleaner, in the machine or in a bucket: the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says household bleach can release chlorine gas when it is mixed with certain other cleaning products, and the symptoms are burning in the nose, throat, lungs or eyes and trouble breathing. If that happens, get out of the room into fresh air and call 911 in the US (999 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere); in the US you can also call Poison Help on 1-800-222-1222. In the UK, the NHS says to call 999 if you think someone may have breathed in something harmful, and 111 if you are not sure. The page is about a machine you control; in a shared laundry room the door is not yours to leave open.

The shrunk jumper, and the creased shirt. Soak the shrunk jumper in hair conditioner is many people doing the same thing: lukewarm water, a good squeeze of ordinary hair conditioner, an hour, then squeezed rather than twisted, pulled gently back toward its old shape on a towel and dried flat. The fence is the whole rule: if the wool has felted, gone dense, stiff and matted with the stitches no longer visible, the change is permanent and no soak reverses it. Never machine-dry it afterwards, or you are back where you started, and if the label says polyester, stop. Hang the shirt in the bathroom while you shower handles light creases with the steam you were making anyway, and its one corrected detail is worth the page: the common photoelectric smoke alarm senses particles in the air and dense steam is exactly that, so leave the door cracked. A damp shirt left in a shut room grows mould, and hard water leaves white spots on dark cloth. Prevention is cheaper than any of it: take the shirt out of the dryer the moment it stops, button it and hang it.

And with no machine at all. Wash it in the tub when there’s no machine is the fallback done properly: soak for twenty minutes or more, then agitate, which is the step that stands in for the drum, pressing and lifting with a clean plunger or a broom handle through a hole in a bucket lid. Use much less soap than a machine’s dose, because a tub does not rinse with gallons and the soap left in the fabric is what leaves clothes stiff and what leaves a rash on some skin; then rinse as a separate step until the water runs clear. Roll each piece in a dry towel and press rather than wringing in a tight twist. Never dry clothes in a microwave, because cotton can scorch, and keep the heavy things, jeans, towels and coats, out of it entirely, because they take days in a room and turn sour first.

Who this is not for. The shirt page names the gap the people behind it could not fill: silk, wool or anything whose label says low heat has no tested method there. The tub page says a laundromat does a better job if you can reach it and spare the coins. And if the mould is already appearing on the walls, the drying page says that is a ventilation problem worth treating as one rather than something to dry around.