Cold/Cold for me unless I'm bleaching whites. Clothes smell sweet and clean. I too struggled with the effectiveness of using cold water but far more clothes now come out of the washer still fitting me. :-)

Jodi-

I wash everything in cold and rinse in cold except for towels and washcloths.I use hot/cold for them.I don't worry too much about the germs/bacteria in the other stuff and my clothes are always clean and smell clean and whites are white.I also use the homemade laundry soap and I do use bleach in the whites.

Thanks for linking the charts....I have been using warm/cold and only use hot for my sheets due to allergies.
I use the clothes line for some things and the dryer for others.
After seeing the chart, I will switch to cold, cold and use the clothes line unless it is too wet outside.
I can use the money I save to go visit my grandkids!

I have a front loader and use the hottest temp the fabric can stand. That means warm for knits and hot for work clothes and linens. I used to use warm for jeans but find they fade at the same rate warm or cold.

Keep in mind that today's warm is not the same as yesterday's warm setting on washers. Some manufacturers barely take the chill out of cold water and call it warm.

I have seen a lot of posts by peeps who complain their loads are dingy after buying a new washer. That is one reason why.

Using a front loader uses a lot less water and there is a lot less water to heat. I am not about to change my ways for 20 bucks a year. Especially after suffering through a horrible skin fungal infection this past year. Hot for me. Bleach when possible.

I spend time in front of the washer switching the button from warm to hot, just to get it at a warm temperature.
The warm setting is "cool", and since I like my water warm, I fluctuate the settings from hot to warm.

Hot for whites. The rinse is automatically set at Cold, no choice, which makes sense. I don't know anyone who uses warm or hot to rinse in.

I haven't used the dryer in my building for 3 years. I line dry everything, year round on my balcony. Love the smell, and in the winter, everything is frozen when I bring the rack in, and as it thaws the air smells so fresh.

However, I am noticing a pale line across the t-shirts where it's folded over the line or rack. Must be the sun bleaching, so I now hang my clothes inside out.

I have front loaders too and I use cold/cold. I only use hot/cold when I feel the need to bleach towels. However since the washing machine is a great breeding place for germs and bacteria so every now and then I run a cleaning cycle on the washer. I put in a cup of bleach and run it through a short wash cycle.

I also use cold/cold most of the time. I can save more money by doing by doing my laundry when the electric rates are off peak. For me that's 9 pm to 6 am Mon -Friday; and from 6pm Friday until Monday at 6am. So I try to consolidate my loads until then. Since there's only 3 of us it's easy.

I use warm/cold for everything, but the warm water is really just not as cold. I do two loads of laundry a week at most so 40 cents a load wouldn't make much difference.

Cold/cold to save money. My laundry looks just as clean as it ever did.

I have a lot of really dirty laundry. There is no way I could wash everything in cold water.

I wish Tide would do a commercial with my laundry - LOL! Nasty!!

I use Cold/Cold for most all of my laundry. When I do whites, I add a cup of Peroxide into the load and let it soak for about 15 minutes before setting the machine on "Go". And I use a Mrs. Stewart's Bluing in my final rinse. Whites are sparkling white. And I line dry whenever it is practical or possible. Not in this summer heat though..

My bleach use is nearly non existent since I started to use peroxide as a replacement. My septic system is far happier for it too.

Kitt

Haha that's funny Iowagirl...I too do a lot of dirty laundry. I am a gardener and my husband who sat behind a desk his whole life doing paperwork for a living has found out how much fun it is to get dirty and the man has learned that lesson well. Most of the time I know that it's not going to come out so I make the best effort I can and hope for the best....Hot for sure.

There "was" a thread on making your own laundry detergent & how much it costs....but not on the water usage.

DH works construction & does our own car mechanicing. So I'm washing car grease out of clothes. I pre-scrub some things, then use...warm/cold for everything. I do 4 loads a week. I also hand wash the silks.

Thanks for posting the chart link...

For normal laundry that I want santiized, I use hot wash and cold rinse. For delicates and big things like blankets, I use cold/cold.

I wash everything on "warm/cold". Our well water is so cold that I have to add warm to it to make it tolerable to stick your hand in there if you need to. And it seems like I have my hands in there a lot. I rely on the soap to sanitize things, not the water temp.

My washer doesn't even have a hot/hot option. The only rinse option it has is cold.

Yep, most of my stuff gets warm/cold, but I've been using more cold/cold lately simply because there is no cold water this time of year. I need to get a well like Flamey!

I do like that calculator though, because it seems to take all the factors into consideration: top or front loader, gas or electric and cost of each.

Cold/cold for most everything I wash. I have a front loader and Tide now makes an HD detergent for cold water washes. My things all look as clean and bright as ever.

All the different responses are interesting. It looks like most of you do cold/cold though.

Flamey, I went to my washer, and looked. mine has only cold rinses as well. I wonder if that is the same on all washers?

I use warm/cold on clothes as I feel it takes warm water to help cut body oils. Hot/cold goes for underwear sometimes and towels always.

DH washes everything cold/cold but I wash everything warm/cold. My washer does have an option for a warm rinse on one of the warm wash cycles but we never use it. The taps are accessible, so I just turn them to the temperature I like for my warm wash. I have to do it every time I wash because DH keeps changing it back. I hang all my clothes to dry above the washer and dryer except for socks and underwear. Actually, I often hang my socks too.

As it happens, I am doing laundry while I sit here. I had already done one load in warm/cold, and then remembered about the cold wash, so this load now is with cold/cold. Don't know if I could do undies in cold.

Sheets, towels and whites all get washed in hot water rinsed in cold, which here in FL is cool/warmish. DH construction clothes which are dirty/sweaty get washed in hot. They come really clean this way. I tried washing his clothes in cold and they did not come clean. You could still see the dirt and smelled dirty. IMO hot water gets them clean of dirt and sweat EVERYTIME. No cold water washed for me. My everyday clothes gets warm water washed unless something is really drubby, then it gets the hot wash.

I use hot for white things using tide with bleach. I use warm for everything else. Never use cold. If you think you laundry is nasty DON'T cut back on laundry detergent. I recently bought a new washer, top loader because I don't like the fronts. I don't think they rinse the clothes well enough and the salesman confirmed that. You have to rinse twice. What I didn't know was that some top loaders fit into the same category as the front loaders. That is what I ended up with. It sets the water level automatically and my queen sheet set plus my white undies and wash cloths only take up a fourth of the tub with the water. And I thought I was over loading my old washer. LOL anyway I have to rinse twice to be sure I have the soap out.

I use Warm/Cold for everything except towels/linens....I use Hot/Cold for those, with a double rinse.

I don't think they rinse the clothes well enough and the salesman confirmed that

I found it to be just the opposite. A top loader just lets all the soap and the gunk settle right back into your clothes when it drains. A front loader spins it out to the sides and down the drain.

When I had a top loader I would have to rinse and rinse to get all the detergent out. With the front loader my clothes are never soapy. The extra rinse takes very little water also.

Salesmen sell things. They will say whatever they think you want them to say to make the sale. I've found most sales people to have little knowledge about their products other than what the flyer tells them. They don't know how things are manufactured, how they are put together or how things work. They sell things.

I always wash on warm/cold. I use coin operated machines in my apartment building so I pay the same regardless. We have the front loaders and I love them. They require far less soap it seems to me like they do a better job.

I've always used cold/cold and the very cheapest detergent I can find. Except for one son's HS practice football uniforms and another son's HS practice soccer gear, our laundry has always been clean, bright and sweet-smelling. When they were babies, I did put a little effort into removing stains before tossing them into cold water.

I use hot water only with bleach on white loads, and I use a little bluing with whites, too. They stay nice and white around all the holes and worn spots.

With six kids, we each used our towels a couple times, too. We'd have gone broke using hot/warm water and fresh towels for all of us for all those years!

There's a lot of things involved with laundry. There's no perfect solution for all situations.

These websites that claim to tell you what things cost are seldom accurate for more than the one or two instances they show. You CANNOT say it will cost you $___ to do a load of clothes since there's all the variables. Let's start with water temperatures. How much heating will depend on the temperature of the water in the first place. Anyone who lives in a northern climate knows that the water temperature from the tap is far different on Christmas Eve than on the 4th of July! Then comes the issue of terminology. "Hot", "warm" and "cold" are relative terms. Some laundry is fine to wash in "cold" water, but not in nearly ice water! "Cold" water in laundry terms (check your detergent specs) should be 70 - 80° so many times to get "cold" water, you would need to heat it! Plus keep in mind that detergents do work anywhere near as well in temperatures below 60°. Powders especially, don't dissolve as well in truly cold water and even liquids don't dissolve as well. If they don't dissolve, they don't do the job as well. And then there's the issue of cost of heating. If you use steam, natural gas, propane, electric, wood or your mother-in-law's flaming breath, it'll have a different cost to heat it and many of them will vary from time of year. So be careful getting sucked in by these websites. They can be used as a guideline for educating yourself but don't take everything as gospel.

Some other things here that are interesting:

I'm always amused with people using bluing. Why? Do you know what bluing is? It's not "whiting"! Bluing dyes your clothes blue and it's an optical illusion to make you think your clothes are more white. Similar in concept to different lighting making things look different. Bluing washes out and has to be replaced to continue the illusion.

As far as hot water shrinking clothes, well, that's seldom true. "Hot" water to many people in laundry is only 95°-120°! Your dryer gets much hotter than that so how can body-temperatures shrink clothes? Now if you boil your clothes, that's different but I doubt many here use near-boiling water temperatures. I think most would be surprised how cold their water temps are. I haven't even addressed heat losses in the pipes and the machines yet. Many people have their water heaters set too low. Only some washers have built-in heaters. So if you use a frontload, have your water heater set at only 120° or less, and factor in the pipe losses, then the loss in the machine since the colder machine tub will cool the water and since FLs use less water it'll cool more than a toploader, you can have some really cold washing temps. Take a thermometer and measure the water in the drum sometime.

Some washers have a warm rinse option but they're fewer and fewer with the regulations now mandating energy efficiency. Mine doesn't have a warm rinse option. Occasionally I run a short wash cycle to fill the tub, then switch to rinse and spin. And my machine does a spin drain. I'm skeptical about the debate over neutral drain vs spin drain allegedly putting dirt back into clothes. After all, in a spin drain (like front loaders) you're essentially forcing the dirty water back through or into the clothes again too, instead of letting it settle on them. This is part of rinsing clothes IMO. And part of the detergent's job to lift and suspend the dirt.

I'm also skeptical when people say they use so much less detergent in a front load. Look at any HE detergent and you get the same number of loads from a bottle or box. And by the comments of the laundramaniacs in the laundry forums, you need to use enough detergent to get the maximum effect from a front loader. Insufficient detergent, too much softener (which I don't use anyway), too cold a water are all contributing factors to smelly washers and mold buildup.

Warmer water cleans better. That's been proven. Now there's an issue of how dirty do your clothes get as to how much cleaning do they need. Some people don't get their clothes dirty and really a rinse would "clean" the clothes sufficiently.

I used to use cold water washes under the theory of saving money but after reading the science in laundry, the truth about temps and realizing hot, warm and cold are ambiguous and undefined terms, I was most things now in 130°-140° water and use a tap cold rinse (since I don't have another option) most of the time and occasionally will warm rinse things if I feel it necessary.

Saving money? I laugh when I see people spend upward of $1.50 per load on imported detergents and then quibble about a few pennies to heat some water. I tend to save money on detergent and not feel bad about spending a few cents to clean bacteria out of the clothes a little better. I use Tide Free & Sensitive detergent and pay only a few cents per load for detergent. I refuse to use softener, another saving and no dryer sheets, savings again. Plus the reality is I can't really see a difference since going to warmer wash temps in my bills, but I see an improvement in my laundry.

Warm/cold for most things. I work in a hospital and wouldn't feel comfortable using cold to wash my scrubs. Probably should use hot but worry about shrinkage and fading. Can't afford to replace them often. I also work out in the yard sometimes and don't think cold would clean sweaty, dirty clothes very well.