I have been doing my laundry for over 20 years and I have NEVER done anything of this nature.
I have washed and dried wool sweaters and shrunk them into Barbie clothes. I have melted bras and panties, but I chalk that up to the super heat coming out of the industrial driers in the laundromat at college and the fact that I wore cheap polyester undergarments before I accepted the wonders of cotton. I have over loaded the washer to the point that it poured soapy water all over the floor. I have let the washer get off-balance so that it literally walked across the floor. I have practically burned down the house by not cleaning out the lint trap on the drier. But, I have never made this mistake, until this week.
I have been moving into the city this past week, so my mind and time has been a little fragmented and ADD. As I was wrapping things up at the old place, you know vacuuming and boxing up the food and cleaning stuff, I decided to do a last couple of loads of laundry since my new place is going to charge me to use the washers and driers.
In my haste, I just threw a bunch of things (towels, t-shirts, undies, bath mats, etc.) into a load. Here is where I went wrong. I threw in a cheap, all be it very pretty, red rag rug that I had by my front door in with all these items. I used cold water, but that didn't save me. As I opened up the washer and started chucking things into the drier, I almost had to kick myself, except for the fact that it was just the perfect ending to the day.... You guessed it, the red rug bled all over everything.... Luckily nothing too important was ruined. I now have some lovely pink undies and a pink t-shirt or two. My mint green flannel jammie bottoms are a strange mottled puke color and my pale blue bath mat is some odd shade as are the blue and green striped towels. The weirdest item by far is the cream bath mat that came out 1/2 cream 1/2 strawberry colored in a random tie-dyed fashion.
Sadly, there was some dye left in the washer when I ran my next load which was my white sheets and my white mattress pad, but luckily they aren't too terribly ruined, just a little tinged in pink and it may have just been my eyes that were reading pink into them.
You may be asking yourself, ABBA, what have you learned from this? Have you learned to sort your clothes better? Have you learned to use those little sheets that supposedly draw dye to them? Have you learned to rinse out your washer after washing darks?
No, I haven't learned any of those things. What I did learn was.... if you buy a cheap red rag rug from Target, when it gets dirty, just throw it out. While that might not be the best earth-friendly lesson, but at least you won't risk turning your flannel jammies into a puke color!!
