PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Before the ball drops for 2023, chances are you’ve dropped some extra cleaning bucks during the long holiday season.
Cyndi Bray is a leading expert on the efficiency of washers and dryers and the expenses associated with laundry.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize that about ten percent of your energy bill goes to doing laundry. So when you have a lot of house guests you have a lot of laundry to do. You may be washing your holiday tablecloth, you may be washing a lot of bed sheets, a lot of towels, and a lot of laundry,” said Bray.
Bray also warns that high heat and hot water are not fabric friendly.
“You’re are going to save about 50 cents per load by washing in cold water and your clothes will last longer because fabric fibers don’t like hot water,” Bray explained. “The first thing I want you to do is to turn the temperature in the washing machine to cold. You don’t have to worry about your clothes not coming out clean because a lot of the detergent on the market is actually formulated to work best in cold water.”
Whether you choose to use liquid or powder, Bray says only two tablespoons of detergent is recommended.
To make people’s lives a little easier, Bray has invented a made-in-America device that takes Scrooge out of laundry. It’s called Wad-Free for Bed Sheets and hits the market in 2020. It is available on Amazon and Wadfree.com.
“I invented Wad Free for Bed Sheets to prevent your sheets from twisting and tangling and balling up so they come out cleaner, the washer stays balanced, and they dry up to 75 percent faster and they are going to have fewer wrinkles,” Bray said.
Every drying second counts. Bray says in Virginia it costs 59 cents an hour to run your dryer.
“So you attach the four corners of the sheet in the load flat sheets and fitted sheets and then you put them in the washing machine you transfer them to the dryer and then they don’t wad up. Some people call in a laundry miracle. It’s really just physics but wad free solves this problem. There’s never been a solution until I invented wad free,” said Bray with pride.
