A couple weeks ago I did an episode about a book that I fell in love with, Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson. I know it’s a book about laundry, but it has so much humor and so much humanity within it and it really just spoke to my heart.
I decided to reach out to Patric and invite him onto the podcast. I was so excited when he said yes right away! Patric is funny and knowledgeable and really just blew my mind with some of the great tips he shared.
Ask the Laundry Expert - Tips for Longer Wearing and Softer Clothes Using Natural Laundry Products with Laundry Expert and Author Patric Richardson of Laundry Love
Megan: Welcome to the podcast Patric, I am so excited to have you! So can you tell me a little bit about your history and how you came to write Laundry Love?
Patric: One of my earliest memories is handing my granny clothespins to put clothes on the clothesline and I fell in love with laundry. When I turned three, Santa brought me a toy washing machine and it was incredible. Also, I have this love of clothes. I love, love, love clothes. Through high school I was really into clothes and went to college, and wanted to go into fashion and ended up getting into textiles. Mona von Bismarck, Mona Williams, when she was named best dressed woman in the world in 1933, left her entire wardrobe to the University of Kentucky. That got me thinking about the conservation of it because you want that stuff to last another 100 years. I’ve worked for Niemann Marcus and Nordstrom. And then, nine years ago, I opened my store and it was called Mona Williams, named after Mona. It was a store full of designer vintage, and I carried a few laundry products. I was not thinking about toxin free, I will tell you, I was thinking about one of the biggest arguments that people have when they go to buy something is they think they have to dry clean it and they don’t want to have to do that. So I was going to counteract that right off the bat. So I started telling customers, ‘Well, you can wash it and here's how.’ It led me down the path of what is dry cleaning doing? I already washed a lot of things just for the practical side, because I didn't want to have to go to the dry cleaner. The thing about going to the dry cleaner is you have to put the clothes in a bag, carry them to the car, get in the car, drive to the dry cleaner, get out of the car, lug them in, get them all logged in, get the slip, put it in your wallet, go back to the car, go back home. Four days later, you get back in the car, try to dig for that slip, pay an obscene amount of money. All the plastic bags, wire hangers, I mean, it's Joan Crawford's nightmare. But I would still send my suits to the dry cleaner, just because I want to press them. I was putting on a suit to go to a wedding and my partner was trying to stop smoking at the time, and he was using the patch. I saw the patch on his shoulder as he was putting his shirt on and something struck me in that exact moment that your body isn't selective. It doesn't just go, I'm just going to take this in and I'm not going to take that in. My suit reeked of dry cleaning fluid and I realized at that very moment that my suit was a patch covering my entire body and full of dry cleaning fluid. It really grossed me out. It completely shifted my thinking. I started telling people that they didn’t need to dry clean and I started carrying safer products in my store. More and more people became curious and I started teaching laundry camp. A producer approached me about a TV show, which was The Laundry Guy. Finally, Karin, who helped me write the book, approached me. When she started talking, I don't think she realized how green I wanted everything to be. No, you don't use that, use vinegar. You don't use that, use vodka. Just the simple ingredients. I think of them as being green, but I also think of them as being practical. Victorians didn't have grocery stores that had all these weirdo chemicals. Right? The Victorians are why we love cashmere and why we love silk. They were able to maintain all of these clothes. They washed everything. I think it's really funny that they maintained everything using very simple products, just because they didn't have anything else. Then technology allows us to have a myriad of products, but all of a sudden, we can't wash half of our wardrobe. I want the cleanest ingredients possible because I want clean things for myself, but I also want clean things because they work. A huge part of my whole approach is you do laundry for people that you love. Laundry is a love language. It makes me very, very happy to iron a shirt for my husband. It's something I can do to care for him. It makes him feel good. He stands a little taller, and he looks a little better. What a simple act to make such a big impact. I'm not going to be like, ,Yeah, I'm going to iron this shirt, but first, I'm going to fill it with sodium lauryl sulfate.’ That doesn't resonate with me. The fact that the simple stuff works, that's the part that makes me happiest, is that you can find safe alternatives that work.
Megan: Well, not only that, but they're actually better for your clothes. I also love clothes and they last longer if they're treated better when you use better ingredients. And you talk about this in the book too. Not washing as often as we think we should.
Patric: I wear my jeans as many times as I can before I wash them, and I do that with everything. The other part is what you use, like the big orange. For example, If you were to wash a down jacket in detergent, it isn't as warm. Because the detergent actually coats the down and takes away its loft. So you take away the inherent quality that you bought that fabric for, because you used dry cleaning fluid, or you use a commercial detergent. In the store, I have a cashmere sweater that we had half dry cleaned and then I washed half of it. Well, the half that's been washed, feels like heaven. It feels like cashmere. Cashmere should really feel like a warm cloud or like the breath of God. Just a warm, soft, comforting feel. When you dry clean it, it gets scratchy, because it's coated with dry cleaning fluid.
Do you know how that fabric softener came to be? In the 30’s and 40’s, the wringer washer was one of the first modern appliances and it used about 40 gallons of water. When people started converting over to more modern washing machines, they only had about 20 gallons of water. People were used to using enough soap or detergent for 40 gallons so when they dropped to 20 gallons, it wasn't rinsing out. Everyone was complaining that their clothes were crunchy. Well, they couldn't or chose not to say, if you use a wringer washer, you need this much. If you use top loading washers, you need this much. Instead of making that clarification on the box, they come up with fabric softener, because fabric softener coats the fabric and gives you this artificial feeling of softness. Fabric softener was created because there was still soap detergent left in your clothes. Crazy. Fabric softener, it's my nemesis.
Megan: Fabric softener is the worst thing in the world! They found a way that they could market a new product for us to spend money on instead of telling us to use less of the product we were already buying. Right? So huge financial decision there too. Tell me why you hate fabric softener and dryer sheets so much?
Patric: I hate them more than squirrels and mosquitoes which you know rank up there in my nemesis because squirrels digging my plants and mosquitoes, well, you know. They coat your fabric to create this artificial feeling of softness and I have a lot of problems with that. The first one is that it makes fabric not breathable. In Minnesota, in the six weeks that we call summer, everybody wears linen. Linen makes you feel like you're naked, it's the most incredible fabric. The reason it's so great is it has all these air holes, and it's so loosely woven. When you coat that fabric with fabric softener or dryer sheets, you coat all of those air holes. I can actually prove this. If you use dryer sheets, pull the lint trap out of your dryer and stick it under the faucet and it will hold water. It acts like a bowl. So if you're using fabric softener and dryer sheets on linen, I mean, you might as well just wear a plastic bag because it's not going to breathe and give you that characteristic that you want. The next thing is that fabrics are meant to wick. In the summer, you wear a cotton polo, because you want it to wick moisture away from your body and keep you cool on the golf course, let's say. If you coat that fabric, it can't wick so you're just standing there hot and sweaty. The next problem is stains. The stain actually goes under this plasticky layer and you have to scrub this plasticky layer off just to get to the stain to get it out. If people tell me that they have trouble with coffee, I know that they're using fabric softener or dryer sheets, because I don't even pretreat coffee and it just washes out. As far as dryer sheets go, the exhaust of your dryer will get built up of that silicone or that saturated fat and lint get stuck in there and people have dryer fires. I mentioned saturated fat? Saturated fat is from rendered horses. So I just want you to know that if you use fabric softener or dryer sheets that you've murdered Secretariat. If you really want fabric softener, dryer sheets, I want you to live with the fact that you're wearing Secretariat. My last reason is people use dryer sheets to keep mice out of their camper or their boat in the offseason. I like to think that I'm smarter than a mouse. But if a mouse chooses to voluntarily run from a dryer sheet, which is where shelter is, why is it a good idea to put it on my clothes and body? So I'm not a fan.
Megan: I like to point out about dryer sheets and fabric softener is that if you're having a nice enjoyable walk on a spring day, and you smell your neighbor doing their laundry. If the smell can travel all the way from their laundry room, all the way to the street and you smell it that strongly, there's no way that stuff is good for you. Chemical fragrances are not good for you. Also, here in the Northwest we wear a lot of down but we also wear a lot of active wear. Because of hiking and all the outdoor stuff that we do here. What you were saying about the coating of the clothes, I mean those clothes are meant to wick moisture and it can't do that with the coating. I often find people talk about their laundry stinking and especially their active clothes, how it just holds on to this extra smell. I haven't had that issue and I think it might be related to the fabric softener and dryer sheets.
Patric: There's two folds to that. That's absolutely part of it. The other part of it is those fabrics are polyester. Polyester is hydrophobic and oleophilic; it hates water and it loves oil. So it loves the oil from your skin and it traps it. I'm using an oxygen bleach which will break that oil down. But if you're using a fabric softener or dryer sheet that sweat and that bacteria has gone under that coating. So you have to get that coating off before the oxygen bleach or whatever you use can do its thing.
Megan: Tell me more about oxygen bleach because I have one in my store. It's the Meliora Oxygen Brightener, and I actually found it works on so many different things from like, rings in your coffee cups to laundry.
Patric: It’s amazing, isn't it? It's 100% Sodium bicarbonate. What's so great about that is, when you mix it with water, all you're making is hydrogen peroxide. It's pure hydrogen peroxide, it's making it in kind of a concentrated form. And it's volatile, which is great because it off gasses oxygen molecules. So you add it, it's H2O2 but it immediately starts off gassing an oxygen molecule. So after a few hours, what you're left with is H2O, and a tiny little bit of soda ash, which is a residue but like, I mean, it's safe enough to use while camping. It's as safe as you can get but it works really well. It's great for anything except wool or silk or down. Don't use it on those. You can just do so many things with it. I clean the grout in my house with it. My cookware is cast iron and things will boil over on it, and it bakes on there and if you put it in the sink and add a little oxygen bleach that stuff just floats to the surface. Yeah, I use it everywhere. The great thing is because it's just hydrogen peroxide, that becomes water. It's safe enough to just use any way you want.
Megan: Right. I love that. Another thing I learned from your book is how laundry detergent works and how you don't need all of the clothes to actually get laundry detergent on them. It changes the water, is that correct?
Patric: Yes, it lowers the viscosity of water. We always used to say it makes water wetter. It's the water that gets your clothes clean. The water moves back and forth through the fibers. The water is what gets everything clean and then the detergent or the soap floats on the surface of the water and dirt comes out of your clothes gets trapped in that surfactant, which is what's on the surface. It's heavy and it goes down the drain. If you use too much, it can't all rinse away. And so the detergent and dirt gets settled back in your clothes. Not only you're walking around in the detergent, you're walking around in your own filth. A detergent pod has enough detergent for five loads of laundry. So if you're a pod lover, you know you're literally walking around in filth. Yeah. Oh my gosh, like dry cleaning! It's disgusting.
Megan: Interesting. The other thing I learned is that we should be using the quickest wash available on our machine.I’m wary of using a warm wash because I'm really tall and so I've always thought I need to use cold because I don't want things to shrink. But yeah, you say that the warm wash is not long enough or hot enough for it actually to cause shrinkage?
Patric: That's the big misnomer about warm wash. You know, we think that a warm wash is like super warm. It isn't as warm as your bath. It's about 70 degrees. A swimming pool is comfortable for swimming when it's about 82 degrees. That's the ideal swimming temperature. If you think of a pool, you think of it as kind of cold. Well, your laundry is probably about 70 degrees. So if you put your hands in it, it feels cold. But that's the warm cycle. Right? So it's warm enough. It's warm enough to activate your detergent or your soap, but it's not, you know, boiling our clothes. It's not that hot. Right? I mean, European machines run at about 100 degrees. But even that really isn't that warm. Not warm enough to make everything shrink like it's a cartoon, you know? But the cycle is about eight minutes because you're using the express cycle. Yeah, right. It's kind of like blanching. You blanch the green beans. That's really kind of what you're doing to the clothes.
Megan: Since we’re talking about shrinkage, something I loved in the book is that you really can wash anything at home if you use the right methods. I really encourage my listeners to buy the book and keep it in your laundry room, so you know exactly how to wash something when it comes to washing it. Let's talk about something like a beautiful cashmere sweater, just an example of how you could wash that and not have to take it to the dry cleaner.
Patric: It's super easy. You take a mesh bag, like a laundry bag, and you put the sweater in it. If you just want to scrunch it up in the bottom, I usually fold it and roll it, either way works, but you push it to the bottom of the bag, and then you roll the bag down around it and put a safety pin through it. Because the point is when it's in the washing machine, it shouldn't move. We don't want it to rub against itself. Wool or cashmere, it's a hair, it's a wool fiber type of hair that doesn't shrink. If you've ever accidentally washed a sweater and it fit you and then when you took it out, it fit Kitty Carryall or something and it was really thick. So the wool didn't shrink, it just moved. It felted. These are wool fibers. And so you put it in the washer, and they start rubbing against themselves. And they rub and they rub the rub and they rub and they lock into place. And they felt. Well, if you put a sweater in the bag so tight that it can't move. It can't rub against itself. So if it can't rub against itself, it can't felt. But the water is still going to move through it and still get it clean.
Megan: And if you're using the right amount of detergent, all of the oils are going to come out to the top and come out with a clean sweater. That is super helpful. Alright, so I got a few more questions that I had to touch on. So let's talk about dingy whites. This question came from my husband who wears white undershirts. We don't use bleach in this house. And he said, Why do my white shirts get so dingy? And how can I get that to get them to brighten up again?
Patric: The big thing is use some oxygen bleach, you know, toss some oxygen bleach in there, that'll help brighten them up. The other thing is, I don't know what detergent you're using, but you might need to use even less. If the detergent, if that surfactant that's in the washing machine gets trapped, that water is dingy. Right? And that dirt just getting trapped back in.
Megan: Another thought I have is we bought this house from previous owners and we took on their old washing machine and the scent from their conventional wash detergent has been in there for so long so it could be coming from the machine itself. How do you clean that?
Patric: You add a gallon of vinegar and a pound of Borax and you run your washer on the longest, hottest cycle. It will break all that down. I'm generally a scent free guy. Because in order to leave scent, you have to leave a residue and I'm anti residue. However, that being said one of my favorite fragrance brands partnered with a laundry product and you can buy this ridiculously, stupid expensive bottle of laundry detergent that's fragranced with that fragrance. Sometimes I love it. So every so often, I will want to wash my shirts in it or something. But anytime I do it, I have to wash our washing machine with vinegar and borax because that residue clings and my machine doesn't get conventional detergents. It lives with soap flakes. If you were to put a detergent pod or something in my machine, I don't even know what it would do, it would probably just blow up. But we'll never find out.
Megan: Super helpful. So let's talk about grass stains. This question came from a friend whose son plays baseball and he has those polyester baseball pants and the grass and the mud. She doesn’t want to use toxins but she just can’t get it out.
Patric: Oxygen bleach will pull the grass stains. The bigger problem is the mud. What you need is a horsehair brush. And so that you know a horsehair brush has no injury to the horse. They trim their manes and tails when they're working horses or they're riding horses, actually. So that's what they're made of. But when you use a horsehair brush, you wet the brush, rub it on the soap, and then you rub that onto the mud stain. It's not really the latherer, but the soap is in the brush. And when you put the brush on the mud, it brings the mud up into the soap, and pulls it up into the brush. Rather than trying to force it deeper. If you were to take a stain remover, it just pushes it deeper into the fabric. So you don't put anything on it. You put this soap onto the brush and then when you rub it pulls it up.
Megan: She's gonna love that. Okay, how about static? And, you know, most of my listeners now use wool balls instead of fabric softener. And they always seem to have issues with the static. And I say, well, the wall balls aren't necessarily meant for static. So what would you say about how to get rid of static?
Patric: This is the thing for which I'm famous, it's really funny. It's a ball of aluminum foil. You take a one yard piece of aluminum foil, and you make a ball a little bit bigger than a tennis ball, and you throw it in the dryer, and over the next 30 to 60 drying cycles, it will continue to shrink. It is not rubbing off on your clothes. What is happening is the air pockets in the ball absorb the static. As the ball continues to compress on itself, it has less and less air pockets. When it gets to about the size of a walnut you put it in recycling and you make a new one.
Megan: Okay, that is a really great tip I've, I've heard about putting safety pins on the wool balls, but I don't think that's enough.
Patric: You need that air pocket. The funny thing is you can't use more than one. Because if you use two, and they touch each other, they release the static charge and make it worse. Right? So you have to use one. And if you've never done it, and you have a pet, the first time you do it, you'll be amazed at how much pet hair ends up in your lint trap. Because that is being held on to your clothes by static. And the other thing, which in the name of science, don't do it. But in the name of science I did. If the second your dryer’s done, you pull your dryer open and touch it, it will give you the shock of a lifetime. Because it's so static charged.
Megan: Such a great tip. I am going to go do that right now. I don't really struggle with that much because I line dry all of my clothes. Well, well. So it's hard in the northwest. I've never done outside line drying because we have a very short summer like you do. So I usually have to go indoors with a dehumidifier running. So, do you have any other tips about line drying? And why you should line dry?
Patric: It's so much better for your clothes, because the hardest thing for your clothes is abrasion. When your clothes tumble that's the worst thing. So the more you minimize abrasion, the better you are. There was a study done in the late 80s that a quality garment would survive 50 trips through the washer and dryer. If you gave up the dryer, you got 120 trips through the washer, more than double the life of the garment by not drying it. So there's that but then, you know I mean there's the environmental piece. Anything woven, I just hang it up, I just put it right onto a hanger and let it dry hanging on my shower rod. Anything knit, sweaters, polos, T shirts, throw them across a drying rack, and I set the drying rack in my bathtub. We have a lot of clothes, because we're both kind of clothes horses. But you know, I can do all of that in my little bathroom. Because once you start using less detergent, and once you start using more natural things that rinse out, you find that your clothes dry so much faster. Because they're not clinging to all that water. So usually when I'm on the fourth load of laundry, I'm putting my first load away, because it's already dry. I know you have the moisture thing, you know, cuz it's very humid in the Northwest. But in the Midwest, it's bone dry right now. So, I mean, we all have humidifiers. You know, so I kind of welcome that extra moisture in the house.
Megan: Well, this was so, so helpful. Again, I just want to thank you again for coming on the podcast. Is there anything else you want to share? And also, how can the listeners find more about you?
Patric: I think you need more than one copy of the book. But that's just me. You need one for the laundry room. And then one just for entertainment, maybe by the bed? I don't know. Or maybe going in the laundry room and you can have an audiobook. So it's like I'm with you in the car. But is there anything else I want to share? I mean, I guess the other thing I really want to share with you is something that I know that you say. You set it today, is you just make one change. When people come to buy products in my store, I'm never a fan of throwing away everything and starting over. Because it's wasteful. You know, so even if you have a big orange detergent, which you know, I tell you to start using less, like go to two tablespoons, until you use it. And then once you use it, make a better choice. You know, if you have dryer sheets and fabric softener, you're just gonna have to throw them away, because there really isn't a reason for you to ever use them again. But beyond that, just baby steps. Start switching over to natural cleaners, of course. And then that leads you to the next thing like, then you'll realize it's easy to wash, kitchen towels and napkins. So you'll stop using paper towels and paper napkins. Then you'll realize cloth diapers are just as easy as disposable. I mean, it'll lead you where you want to go, because you'll find that you can do it. The final thing is I want to tell you the story. And it's gonna sound a little foolish, but it is definitely not foolish. And the woman who wrote it wasn't foolish. And I was a blubbering mess reading it. I had a woman write in to me, and she said that she'd watch my show with her mom, and at the time she had a two month old baby and she was really struggling. I don't have children but I imagine that having a newborn baby and being a new mom, you probably struggle. So you know, she tells me that she's struggling. And I'm like, oh my goodness, you're struggling, you know. So she watched my show with her mom and watched me clean the wedding dress and the stuffed animal etc. And then she checked my book out of the library. And from that, she said that she felt confident that she could do her daughter's laundry. And she was able to start taking care of her daughter. And she realized that she needed to take care of her in every other way. And she left her abusive husband, which is incredible. I mean, and so you know, Somerset Maugham once said, “Look after your laundry and your soul will look after itself.” If you start taking care of your laundry and you start making greener choices with your laundry, you're going to realize, like I can use cloth napkins and dish towels rather than paper towels because it's easy for me to launder them. It's easy for me to keep them clean, and keep them fresh. And then you know from there you can make all sorts of choices because you're not tied to conventional cleaning methods. You know, I mean, if you want to wear ball gowns to work, you know you can wash them at home So all those things will happen. What I want you to really get is once you start using greener, cleaner methods, it opens up so many opportunities.
For wanting to reach me, I'm on Twitter and Instagram @laundrypatric. On Thursdays at 1:30PM CST, I do laundry live on Facebook, where people can call in, and they can ask me anything they want. I answer it live in the moment. So if you just all of a sudden, you know, have a Sharpie stain on your favorite sweater, talk about it right then. It's only 15 minutes, just because I want it to be quick and easy. So those are the ways that you can sort of get in touch with me.
Megan: Awesome. Well, I want to thank you for using your voice and sharing your story and obviously making a huge impact on people that you did not intend. You write a book about laundry and you find out about people leaving their abusive husbands. That is really incredible. And it's something I encourage my listeners to do as well to share and to use your voice for good. So I just really, really, really want to thank you for being on the podcast today. It's been wonderful to connect with you. We are like kindred spirits. We both love clothes. We both love toxin free products and everything. And thank you for being here.
Patric: Thank you so much for having me. And, you know, and thank you for pushing toxin- free because you know, if we all keep doing it eventually everybody else will catch on.
