Helpful Hints from joeeze: How to get the best results from your washing machine

Few people know that the order in which you add clothes, detergent, bleach, fabric softener and God knows what else to your washing machine directly impacts how clean your laundry gets.

For those who never knew or once did but forgot, the correct order of placement into a top-loading machine is:

1. Water (alone)

2. Detergent (99% of people use too much, which decreases its ability to remove dirt) et al., i.e., bleach, fabric softener and God knows what else

3. Clothes

But you say, easy for you to remember, joe, but not so easy for me.

Wrong.

Because I'm now going to share with you the super-secret, super-clever mnemonic I made up sometime in the second half of the last century to help me remember the correct order of placement into the machine.

Ready?

WC

As in water closet.

All you have to do when it's time to do the laundry is conjure up "W.C.", then remember it's actually W.D.C. —  Water Detergent Clothes — but it'll be obvious that to preserve the integrity of W.C., the D. has to go in the middle and Bob's your uncle.

There, that didn't hurt a bit, did it?

And think of all the money you're going to save on detergent by reading the directions.

Note: the video up top featuring a front-loading machine always cracks me up; that's why it heads the post.