Why not to overload your machine?

Yet how do you know if you’ve overloaded your machine?

Luckily there is one simple tip when it comes to knowing if you have too many clothes in your washing machine: the 1-hand rule. By placing your hand into your machine’s drum, you can see how much space is left. Perfect is if you can fit nothing else in the drum, just your hand and your wash. If you can’t get your hand into the drum, then it’s overloaded.

That isn’t the only way of overloading, though. Washing machine drums also have a weight limit, so be careful not to overdo that. Generally, the average washing machine can take 3kg, with larger ones available. As always, check your instruction manual to be sure.

What can happen if you overload your machine, though?

Well, the best case scenario is that your clothes just don’t get clean. Sometimes they’ll even come out smelling worse than before.

That’s because those clothes absorb all the water, leaving no space for your detergent to dissolve. That also means that you can get horrible detergent marks on your garments, too. It doesn’t even matter if you use a great detergent like Ariel, you won’t get that great stain removal with too many garments in your drum.

You can also get a clothes snake, where all your items get rolled up together to make one long bundle. Then only the outside gets washed and everything wrapped in the middle stays as dirty as before.

Worse, though, you can end up with detergent residue in your machine, which can be harmful. Overload too often and you can damage your washing machine so all your loads come out smelling worse than when you put them in.

So always put your hand in the drum to make sure you’ve not overloaded. Now you’ve given the space for Ariel detergent to work its magic, every time.