Your experience might vary, but what we knew about stains (before we knew better) was that we should buy a big-name product from a big-name corporation that says it removes stains, spray it on our clothing, and hope for the best. Surely it’ll work just like in the commercial, right?

Yet how many clothing items or linens have we gotten rid of because one of these products didn’t work just like in the commercial, and we assumed nothing more could be done? Part of this was the belief we held that once any stain went through the dryer, it was “baked in” forever, and then it was truly — as they say — toast.

The good news is: this is absolutely wrong!

We’ve previously mentioned “Laundry Love,” a delightful book written by Patric Richardson — aka The Laundry Evangelist — a proud Minnesotan who loves doing laundry so much, he even holds laundry camps! With the help of a cast of real-life characters such as his beloved Granny Dude and professors of fashion and textiles (did you know there was such a thing?), he was raised with an unusual love and understanding of the clothing we wear and how best to take care of it. It’s a witty and delightful read from start to finish, includes the suggestion to install a disco ball in your laundry room (but of course!) and will absolutely rock your world.

On the subject of stains — which he devotes an entire chapter to — he lists recipes for the removal of 72 distinct substances, literally from avocado to watermelon. To fully arm your arsenal of stain removal ammo, here are the 10 ingredients he recommends as being all you need to remove any stain:

1. Sodium percarbonate (a bleach alternative)

2. A small laundry brush

3. A laundry soap bar, such as Fels-Naptha

4. White vinegar, combined 1:1 with water in a spray bottle

5. Isopropyl alcohol (70% rubbing alcohol)

6. An oil-based stain solution, such as The Laundress Stain Solution

7. Amodex (a “magical, non-toxic” product recommended by permanent ink manufacturers)

8. Cheap vodka in a spray bottle

9. White terry washcloths (inexpensive; buy by the stack)

10. Cotton makeup pads

All of these items are available at a variety of brick-and-mortar stores as well as multiple online outlets.

While we encourage you to get a copy of “Laundry Love” for yourself, we are also happy to pass along his recipe for any stain you’re up against - just let us know what you’re up against!

Here’s a common one, which might be the single biggest stain we end up throwing clothes out over: perspiration. This recipe can be used for underarm stains, ring around the collar and stained cuffs, and part of the process can be repeated before you send your items to us for laundering, to prevent perspiration stains from appearing in the first place!

As close to your laundry pickup as possible:

1. Place a few drops of oil-based stain remover on the stain, sprinkle about 10 grains of sodium percarbonate on each drop, then rub into the stain with your fingers.

2. Let sit for 30 minutes (Patric suggests you go for a walk, write to your Congressperson, or Hula Hoop).

3. Carefully pour boiling water right through the stain.

4. Toss it in your Family Laundry bag for pickup!

Now, every time you send the item to be washed in the future, spray the underarms, collar and cuffs with your 50/50 vinegar/water mixture beforehand, to prevent new perspiration stains from appearing.

Let us know how well this works for you! We’re so grateful to have found “Laundry Love” and all of Patric’s fantastic, proven methods for making laundry a more successful and enjoyable endeavor. You’ve found another way: having us do it! But together, we can do an even better job of getting and keeping your clothes sparkling clean and wearable for a long, long time.

In Community (and disco balls!),

David, Laura and The Family Laundry Team

When we began our laundry journey and knew we wanted to provide pickup and delivery laundry service to families and local businesses, we assumed we would model our service after the way we’d always done laundry in our own home: using cold water to save colors and energy cost, washing with standard laundry detergent, using either liquid fabric softener and dryer sheets, and offering bleaching. We operated like this for the first few years, even offering a selection of fragrances.

But once we really began to evaluate the choices we were making, we discovered the truth about the way the standard American household typically does laundry, and this prompted us to make a series of changes that boiled down to a single philosophy: simplicity.

We learned that cold water doesn’t effectively dilute and distribute detergent, and hot water doesn’t clean any better than warm, so every load of laundry done by Family Laundry is washed in the same temperature: warm water.

Buying typical store brands of laundry detergent created unwanted leftovers: residue on the clothing and linens we were laundering, and also an enormous amount of empty packaging that had to be recycled. And while recycling seems to make everything ok, we now know that much of what goes into recycling doesn’t actually get recycled, and plastic in particular – if it even gets recycled – cannot be recycled indefinitely (like glass or aluminum) but will become unstable and end up in a landfill eventually anyway.

Enter Puretergent, an Oakland-made eco-friendly product devoid of all the toxic substances found in typical laundry detergents, which leaves nothing behind in the way of residue on your clothing and provides a closed-loop packaging system: they deliver containers of their product, which they then pick up and reuse once we have emptied them.

We learned that fabric softener is completely unnecessary, and that the “effect” provided by most fabric softening products is actually a coating that is left on your laundry. Add to that the toxic ingredients used (and often not disclosed, as the manufacturers classify them as “trade secrets”) and the mostly plastic packaging, and we have another environmental nightmare. We used wool dryer balls for a time, but keeping them clean proved challenging, so we abandoned those as well.

Bleach is also unnecessary (as we’ve written about before), comes in plastic jugs, and puts toxic chemicals into our lives and our environment. So we nixed the bleach, and installed an ozone injecting system at our water main.

For packaging our own product — beautiful, neatly folded stacks of clean clothes and linens — we knew we would never use plastic bags. Wrapping in paper was a more reusable and recyclable option, but we ultimately decided to go super minimal and simply tie the bundles with recyclable paper twine.

Doing laundry can be so complicated! Of course, the more complicated it is, the more products we “need,” and the more manufacturers and corporations benefit — but at the expense of our health and well-being, our bank accounts and our planet. Family Laundry does not want to support this cycle.

So what does this all boil down to? Family Laundry’s simple recipe for clean, sanitized laundry:

Warm, ozonated water

Puretergent

Tied with twine

Done and done.

Thank you for continuing to support our philosophy of simplicity. We truly believe simple is better.

In Community,

Laura, David and The Family Laundry Team

We know those other guys offer dry cleaning service along with wash & fold — but from the very beginning, we knew we would always stick to basic laundry only. In our FAQ, we touch on the reasons why, but here’s a bit more information:

1. Dry cleaning is not a universal need.

We wanted to serve as many households, families and businesses as possible in our community, and dry cleaning is becoming something that fewer and fewer people need as time goes by. Especially now that offices have emptied and the work-from-home trend has gone from an occasional employee perk to an entirely new way of working that employees want and demand, the “office wardrobe” has changed forever. This means more people are wearing more comfortable, more easily cared for clothing, and fewer items that require dry cleaning.

2. Dry cleaning is actually unnecessary for many garments marked Dry Clean Only.

This is something else we learned from “Laundry Love.” Many of the large items we may have gotten in the habit of sending to the dry cleaners — such as rugs, comforters, and dog beds — can absolutely be safely machine-washed. Patric takes that a step further when he says, “Anything your dry cleaner can clean, you can clean better.” This includes — believe it or not! — wool suits, sheepskin boots, formal gowns, shower curtains, pillows, sweaters, stuffed animals and many more items including fur coats! (Though who wears those anymore?) As with his stain recipes, “Laundry Love,” contains specific instructions for how to clean all of these items without sending them to the dry cleaner. And if it’s just something big, like a comforter, sleeping bag or dog bed, we’ve got the big machines that will do the job!

3. The dry-cleaning process is highly toxic and dangerous — negatively affecting you, your clothes, dry cleaner staff and groundwater.

An environmental geologist friend of ours tells us that dry cleaners are one of the biggest contaminants of groundwater. Millions are spent on remediation of the toxic leftovers produced by dry cleaners around the world. As Patric says, “It’s time to break up with your dry cleaner.” Dry cleaning is only “dry” in the sense that it doesn’t use water. Instead, the most common dry-cleaning solvent is liquid perchlorethylene, aka “perc” or PCE. Perc contaminates groundwater, the World Health Organization says it’s “probably carcinogenic to humans,” and it’s actually very hard on your clothes and even shortens their life. Minneapolis banned perc in 2018, and dry-cleaning machines using perc in California cannot operate after 2023. Some dry cleaners are offering alternatives such as DF-2000, which is still a neurotoxin (and a petroleum product), liquid carbon dioxide, which is outrageously expensive, and here’s a good one: “wet cleaning.” Guess what that is: washing with water and detergent!

Not offering dry cleaning also allows us to focus on doing one thing and doing it better than anyone else (kind of like Orville Redenbacher): laundry.

We are grateful every time you choose to entrust us with the task of cleaning your clothing and household items. Buy the book or get in touch if you want to know how Patric recommends cleaning any “dry clean only” item!

In Community (and popcorn),

Laura, David & The Family Laundry Team