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The Wash Guide
Nick Townsend, smiling, in round tortoiseshell glasses

Writer

Nick Townsend

Founder and editor

For years, Nick washed his bedding at 60 with the dial turned all the way up, because someone had once told him to. Then he read the label.

It was on a new linen sheet, and it said 40. The honest truth was that he didn’t know how to wash it, or much else. He’d been going by things he’d once heard, like most people. When he went looking for real answers, what he found was folklore: care labels nobody can read, advice passed down through families that contradicts the advice passed down through other families, and a general sense that everyone else had been handed a manual he’d somehow missed. The more he dug, the clearer it got. People weren’t doing it wrong. Nobody had ever been properly taught. Including him.

The label had the answer the whole time. I just didn’t know how to read it.
Nick Townsend

He isn’t a chemist, but he’s someone who falls into subjects, and who’s spent many years reading and researching for the love of it. Before laundry, it was movies. Actually, it’s still movies. Before that, it was old maps and shipwrecks. Folklore being the thread that runs through all of them. He’s also the friend who gets sent a photo of a stain at eleven at night, and answers it.

He owes the makers of several wool jumpers an apology. He blamed them for what he’d done on the wrong cycle. The wool piece is that apology. These days he reads the label and the composition before the price tag.

He founded The Wash Guide in 2026. It began as a note on his phone.

The longer story, bedsheet included, is on the About page.

Also true

Can’t walk past
A care label in a shop
Will argue about
Fabric softener on towels
Still sorry about
A navy merino jumper
Pieces
9
Writing since
Most recent

How I work

You shouldn’t have to take my word for any of this. Every piece lists its sources at the foot, so you can go and check the ones you doubt. Where the honest answer is that nobody knows, you get that instead of a number. And if something here turns out to be wrong, it comes out rather than quietly staying up. That’s happened twice so far.

Writing

  1. The WhyMost of laundry happens between washes.The wash is the smallest part of looking after clothes. What you do in the days between decides how often you need one.
  2. The Cold MonthsCan you wash wool in the machine?Often, yes, and sometimes more safely than by hand. Wool shrinks when it is rubbed, not when it gets wet, and a good wool cycle rubs it less than a sink does.
  3. StainsWhy white shirts go yellow under the armsIt is not your sweat, which is almost certainly clear. It is the antiperspirant, working on your shirt instead of on your skin.
  4. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your bedsheets?Weekly is one of the better-supported numbers in laundry. Two things people repeat about beds are not, and both of them were ours.
  5. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your pillows?Half of them should never be submerged, and the frightening statistics behind the advice turn out to have no study under them.
  6. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your jeans?There is no honest number, and the three camps who offer you one are each answering a different question from the one you asked.
  7. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your gym clothes?Every time, and not because of germs. The smell is an oil, the fabric holds on to it, and the wash never quite gets it all out.
  8. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your towels?Less often than the scary numbers suggest, and it depends far more on how the towel dries than on how often you have used it.
  9. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your bras?Tightening the straps is the obvious move and the wrong one. What decides whether a bra still fits in a year is whether it gets a day off between wears.