The Laundry Guy Reveals You've Been Doing Your Washing Wrong All Along

Laundry day can be one day a week or it can be every day. No matter how often you wash your clothes, it feels like a chore. Even if laundry is something you don't want to do, you want to do it right, and who better to give you advice on how to wash your clothes than Discovery Plus' "The Laundry Guy," a.k.a. Patric Richardson.

Aptly titled "The Laundry Guy," Richardson's show premiered on Discovery Plus as a streaming offering on March 31, 2021. Each episode details an experience Richardson has had with a person who has had a laundry crisis in their lives. According to HGTV, Richardson might give advice to someone who lost an heirloom coat to a bad washing decision, or ruined a cherished baby blanket.

Richardson came about his nickname honestly. The Kentucky native opened his own store in the famed Mall of America selling vintage clothing and accessories. He knew how carefully these items needed to be washed, and that is where his obsession with laundry began, according to TV Over Mind. That site also reports that Richardson's grandmother, "fearless laundress," as he calls her, washes all clothing by hand.

Patric Richardson, who also authored a book called "Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore" (via Apartment Therapy), knows there are common mistakes most of us make when we wash out clothes, sheets, towels, and other textile items, and he wants to save you from making those grave errors so you can keep your cherished items in tip-top shape.

According to HGTV, he first wants you to stop using so much laundry detergent. "Everybody uses too much soap or too much detergent," he says. "If something doesn't completely rinse out, then it's holding the detergent in the water but with that it's holding on the dirt from the washing machine because it's all trapped in there together."

And speaking of too much soap, The Laundry Guy tells HGTV that laundry pods have enough detergent in them for several loads, so definitely ditch them.

Richardson also feels people just wash their clothes for way too long and fear turning up the heat. According to HGTV, the express cycle is long enough to get most items clean as long as the water is warm enough.

Finally, don't fear using bleach. While chlorine bleach will indeed fade color on non-white, oxygen bleach will not and is perfectly color-safe, so use them and get those stains right out (via HGTV).