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Doing the weekly wash is a task that many of us struggle with. No matter how much we try to practice what Mother taught us, we still seem to be inefficient and get poor results, i.e. dingy stained clothes that took our whole Saturday to produce, and are wrinkled when we pull them out of the drawer.

If you have never been taught to do the wash, or if you just feel your current methods are ineffective, here are some tips to help you learn, and streamline this task. Also explained is a "Power Load" that can eliminate much of the need for pretreating, or concerning yourself with stains at all. Caution, these tips contradict Mother several times.

Let's start with sorting. Recent developments have changed the way we sort our laundry. Many will still recommend that you keep your whites, lights, and darks separate to avoid colors bleeding onto the rest of the laundry. Because of the advances made in colorfastness this kind of sorting is no longer necessary.

It is still a good idea to wash your towels and whites separately. Towels cause plenty of lint that looks awful on the rest of your laundry, especially dark colors. Wash whites separately because this load is treated differently, as we will see later.

Some articles do still bleed in the wash, so you should take some caution with new items. Most dark denim, for instance, can bleed in the first few washes. Until you are sure, you may feel more comfortable washing items that are bolder in color separately. A rule however, anything that has already been washed several times will not bleed and can safely be washed in a "regular" load.

This leaves us with three types of laundry loads: regular laundry, towels and items that produce lint, and the whites (or our "Power Load") including stained items or items needing treatment, regardless of color. Let's look at how to wash each.

There are some basic tips that are good for any load of laundry.

1) All loads, except your white load, should be washed on cold.

2) A scoop of OxiClean, along with the recommended amount of your favorite laundry detergent, in each load keeps everything bright.

3) Only fill the washer 2/3 of the way up the agitator.
Over filling means the clothes can't freely move in the water, meaning that they can't get clean. Over filling also puts undue strain on the machine, and will quickly wear it out.

4) Let every load soak for at least 15 minutes.
Many machines have soak cycles that will fill, agitate for a few minutes, soak, and then run the cycle through. If

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