[quote=“stragbasher”]I put them in the machine, forget about them for three days, wash them again, (repeat as often as unnecessary, ie until you run out of underwear) hang them outside, and forget about them until I need them. Bring that shirt in, iron it, and put it on.
Filthy.[/quote]
That’s basicaly me 'n all.
No one is admitting to bringing their clothes to the local laundry and having them done for you? Well, let me be the first. I will never do laundry again. My clothes are crisply folded, shirts perfectly ironed, less than 300NT a week…ya gotta be kidding me…I’ll give up breathing before I’ll ever do laundry again.
Yeah they look wonderful with skidmarks…
Get a washing maching that washes with hot water… The enzymes in detergent need the hot water to get them eating into your stains
Westinghouse washer and then hung out to dry (dryer broke). The Japanese washers work just as well (but are 10x fancier and quieter). Since Taiwan is so humid, if you don’t take your clothes out of your washer soon after, you end up with a moldy smell.
Dr. Washing is da man!
Try a water softener system for your hot water.
Toshiba washing machine (forget the model) and Cheer from Costco. Cheer costs $800NT for the HUGE bottle, you know… turn it on it’s side and use the built-in spigot (sp?). Cheer works fine in cold water.
Oh and having a dryer works wonders. Can’t handle that hanging crap.
Iris is right, I use an Italian front loader which goes up ot 60C and then standard detergent - followed by a quick tumbling.
That usually does the trick.
That said, my clothes only gets real clean at home - will splash out on a new washer which can go up to 95C next time.
Move out of Yong He. 
S TV:
Urban myth.
With most of the people in Taiwan and other countries washing in cold water you don’t think the manufacturers have addressed this?
By the way, my clothes clean easily.
I used a TECO top loader, cold water only, with Liquid Tide (key) and many of the things Maoman listed, all but the softener stuff and the dryer anti-cling sheets.
BTW, I read once in the WSJ that the reason P&G in Cincinnati have about two dozen types of Tide alone on the market is that Americans can’t seem to follow directions, or won’t. It drives P&G crazy, but their only solution to date was to segment the market and target each with its own particular kind of modified Tide product. Big lesson was read the damn directions, they said.
Tide - liquid or powder - has finished in the top 2 for, like, 20+ years running in America’s Consumer Reports magazine, and for the past 5-6 it’s been #1. Like wolf said, if it’s sold here for the Taiwan market, that means P&G engineered it, tailored it, for the Taiwan market.
No real problem, either. I just followed the directions on the Tide bottle, even the whites came out reasonably white. I must admit, though - not American white, but reasonably so. It’s the water temp, like Iris and Mr. He say, imo, that’s so important for whites - and the Tide. German soap’s probably good stuff, too, if you have a German machine to use it in.
Make sure you get them out of the washer immediately, asap. Hang or dry, whatever, either worked fine for me.
I don’t have a washing machine at home at the moment, so I take my clothes down to the laundromat and wash them myself and take them home and hang them to dry. The only problem I get from time to time is that my blouses sometimes have deodrant stains on them. I started using a new stain remover called vanish about two weeks ago. Now my white clothes (which I was in hot water) are so day-glo white it’s cool and the deodrant stains have come out of my shirts.
I guess that people who sweat a lot will have a problem with the smell. My ex-boyfriend is a professional basketball player and sweated so much he had to change clothes 3 times during training, I used hot water and a washing booster to get the smell out. I would think the same would work here.
Well, I know that at least one of you is lying on the poll, because Tomas didn’t vote for the “herd of xiaojies” option. 
Surfbunny, I’d be interested in where to find that whitener. My undies are looking dingy.
Alleycat, I wasn’t in YongHe for two of the three problem places. 
Actually, the best of them so far has been the commercial laundry in YongHe – SOMETIMES the clothes come back clean. (Other times, the guy must not let the rinse cycle run long enough, because they have a really weird soap reek.)
Toe Slave, the commercial laundry might be better than the other options, but my clothes still don’t get CLEAN. Sigh.
Well, I’m moving to another place now, with new washers to try. I think they’re the same sort as in the second place, which didn’t work worth a damn. 
But here’s hoping.
The reason clothes get clean in cold water here is because the powder is full of bleach.
Despite what Wolf the Contrarian says, hot water alone emulsifies fats before the powder gets to work and is more efficient for some types of stain. If used with a biological detergent, warm water is as good as cleaning clothes as bleach but means your black clothes stay black and cotton doesn’t get eaten away by the bleach.
I’ve brought a few expensive shirts from England years ago which I had owned for years. Six months of Taipei washing machines and bleach detergents and they were ruined. The very act of yanking your clothes out of a machine in a tangled mess destroys them.
The vast majority of people here aren’t wearing clothes that cost them a huge deal of money. Many people I knew back home had maybe fewer items of clothing, but shirts and trousers that were over
I think front-loading washing machines that heat the water are getting slowly more common.
I read somewhere that bleach doesn’t clean things, only whiten them. Still, I haven’t noticed significant fading of my clothes here, so maybe not all powders are full of bleach.
[quote=“hexuan”]Despite what Wolf the Contrarian says, hot water alone emulsifies fats before the powder gets to work and is more efficient for some types of stain. If used with a biological detergent, warm water is as good as cleaning clothes as bleach but means your black clothes stay black and cotton doesn’t get eaten away by the bleach.[/quote]I’m glad you mention the bio/non-bio distinction. As you said, I think it’s biological detergents that really need warm or hot water to work. But I don’t know how many of the detergents available here are biological.
I have found it difficult to get stuff clean with local detergents and my top-loading, cold water washer. I often soak stuff for a while and sometimes even wash things twice.
With whites, I sometimes chuck buckets of hot water in the machine and soak them in that.
I buy it at Carrefour, it’s called Vanish power O2.
I’ve been looking into front-loading washers and I remembered this thread. Ideally, due to the limited space in my apartment (I will actually place the machine in the kitchen under the counter), I’d like to get one that doubles as a dryer. But the only one that I’ve found that does that is an LG (made in Korea). Seems like the European brands (Bosch, Asko) are washers only. Can anyone recommend a good two-in-one?
What brand is it? How do you like it so far?
What brand is it? How do you like it so far?[/quote]
It’s a Brandt (French) machine, and apart from a minor problem right at the beginning, it’s been running smoothly for almost 2.5 years now (with an average of 2 fillings/week). It’s not a two-in-one, though.
I bought it at Kuting Daiichi, it cost 14.000 NT$ then.
HTH
Iris
Brandt make 2 in 1 machines as well. Think I saw one in Tesco.
They are more prone to breakdowns and don’t last as long, the 2 in 1 I had in Copenhagen lasted a mere 4 years before major repairs were neccessary.
The two-in-ones all seem to suck. The dryers in them don’t work the same way a conventional dryer works and you can only dry half a load or less in them. They take up to four times as long as a proper dryer. Instead, I would make sure to get a front loader or a toploader with a side-spinning drum with a high RPM spin. That will get even more water out and your clothes will dry quite fast after you hang them.
This was my birthday present last year:
http://www.appliances.co.uk/cat/318942.asp
I lusted for this machine. It gets clothes cleaner than any washing machine I’ve ever used in the US, UK, Taiwan or HK. The maximum spin RPM is 1100. Most front-loaders in Taiwan are only about 400RPM. If I move back to the states, I may just take it with me. Even though it gets clothes very clean, it is much easier on them than American or Taiwanese toploaders. It’s also quite heavy (don’t the toploaders in Taiwan seem like they have the weight of a microwave?) and seems nearly indestructible. I’ve even allowed my wife to use it; she hasn’t managed to break it yet.