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The Wash Guide
The app
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
20
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 WashClean clothes that still smell, and where it comes fromWhy do clothes smell after washing and drying? Rarely because of the machine. It’s the oil the wash left in the fabric, and the hours the load took to dry.
  3. The Festive PlaybookCandle wax, and why the iron does what the wash can’tHow do you get candle wax out of clothes and table linen? Not in the wash. Lift what you can cold, iron out the rest, then treat the colour.
  4. The Festive PlaybookRed wine, and what the salt was really forHow do you get red wine out of clothes? Not with salt or white wine. In a test of the old remedies, peroxide and washing-up liquid did best.
  5. The Festive PlaybookGravy, and the fat that stays behindHow do you get gravy out of clothes? Most of it washes out on its own. What stays is the fat, so take that out first, and look again once it’s dry.
  6. The Festive PlaybookCranberry, and the stain that changes colourHow do you get cranberry juice out of clothes? Cold water first, then a warm wash and oxygen bleach. And if soap turns it blue, it hasn’t set.
  7. The Festive PlaybookChocolate, and the stain made to meltHot water or cold for a chocolate stain? Start cool, but nobody has shown that hot water sets it. Chocolate is three stains at once.
  8. The WashThe cold wash, and what the heat still buys youDoes washing in cold water actually clean clothes? Mostly, yes. Heat still earns its keep against body oil, stomach bugs and a few stubborn stains.
  9. DryingThe tumble dryer, and what really shrinks your clothesWhat happens if you tumble dry something that says not to? It depends what the label is protecting. And it isn’t the heat that shrinks it.
  10. The Cold MonthsKilling bed bugs, moths and ticks in your laundryDoes washing kill bed bugs, moths and ticks? Only if it gets hot enough for long enough, and the number on the dial can’t tell you whether it did.
  11. The Cold MonthsDrying clothes indoors without the damp or the smellIs drying clothes indoors bad for you? Not on its own. A load of washing gives off about two litres of water, and it goes out of a window, into a dehumidifier, or onto the coldest wall in the room.
  12. The Cold MonthsCan you wash a down jacket?Usually, yes. The down itself is better washed than dry-cleaned. What leaves a jacket flat and lumpy is the drying, and the dryer is how you fix it.
  13. The Cold MonthsCan you wash wool in the machine?Often, yes, and sometimes more safely than by hand. Wool shrinks when it’s rubbed, not when it gets wet, and a good wool cycle rubs it less than a sink does.
  14. StainsWhy white shirts go yellow under the armsIt’s not your sweat, which is almost certainly clear. It’s the antiperspirant, working on your shirt instead of on your skin.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. How OftenHow often should you actually wash your jeans?There’s no honest number, and the three camps who offer you one are each answering a different question from the one you asked.
  18. 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.
  19. 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’ve used it.
  20. 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.