Washing

Washing, Hygiene, and Clothing Care

Washing is one way of cleaning, namely with water and often some kind of soap or detergent. Washing is defined by water as the working medium, carrying soil away from the surface being cleaned. It is an essential part of good hygiene. Hands, bodies and clothing accumulate oils, sweat and environmental dirt, and regular washing removes that accumulation before it causes odour or irritation. Keeping clothing clean is hugely important: garments sit against the skin for hours, absorb sweat and oils, and are reworn.

Clean clothing is also a matter of garment life. Dirt particles worked into a fabric act as abrasives at the fibres, body oils left in collars and underarms oxidise and yellow, and stains set more firmly the longer they remain. Washing at sensible intervals, with the method matched to the fabric and its care label symbols, removes soiling before it becomes damage.

Laundry: Washing Clothing and Textiles

Laundry refers to the washing of clothing and other textiles, a narrower term than washing in general, and it extends by usage to the items awaiting washing, the washed items themselves, and the place where the work is done. Laundry processes are often done in a room reserved for that purpose; in an individual home this is referred to as a laundry room, and larger households, hotels, hospitals and institutions maintain laundry facilities scaled to the volume of clothing, bedding and towels they must turn around. Sorting is the first laundry operation: whites from colours, sturdy cottons from delicates, heavily soiled work clothes from lightly worn garments, because water temperature, agitation and detergent that suit one load can damage another.

Washing laundry has been part of history since humans began to wear clothes. Fortunately, in many places in the world the process has become easier. Washing clothing in a laundry machine is much easier than going down to the river and using rocks, the older method in which garments were soaked, beaten and scrubbed against stones to drive water and loosened dirt through the fibres. Between those extremes lie washtubs, washboards and commercial laundries, each reducing the labour of the same basic cycle: wet the textile, apply soap and mechanical action, rinse away the loosened soil, and remove the water so the item can dry. The washing machine automates that cycle. What has changed through history is the labour, not the underlying process.

How Soap and Detergent Make Washing Work

Water alone is a poor cleaner of the soiling that matters most on clothing, because body oils and greasy dirt do not mix with water and resist being rinsed away. Soaps and detergents solve that problem: they assist in the emulsification of oils and dirt particles so they can be washed away. Their molecules attach to grease at one end and to water at the other, breaking oils into tiny suspended droplets and lifting dirt particles from the fibre surface so the wash water can carry them off instead of redepositing them on the load. Agitation, whether by hand, by rocks and beating in earlier practice, or by the drum of a washing machine, supplies the mechanical energy that works the soapy water through the textile and dislodges what chemistry has loosened.

Rinsing completes the sequence by replacing dirty wash water with clean water until detergent and suspended soil are gone, since residue attracts fresh dirt and can irritate skin. Temperature, detergent dose and cycle length are balanced against the textile: hot, vigorous washing cleans heavily soiled sturdy fabrics, while cool, gentle washing protects dyes, elastic, wool and delicate construction.