I just wondered this today. When you a stain on a shirt or on your body, you have to really scrub to get it out. Just rinsing it with water wont remove the stain. So how do machine washer clean clothes so well without using any type of pressure?
I have seen stains come off from clothes, and its really impressive.
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Its the spinning and the agitation from that on the clothes, that’s why for the bad stains they want you to pretreat it to help loosen it up so the machine has less issues.
It’s a combination of the fact that you’re trying to scrub the stain off in like 30 seconds, and it takes the machine 30 minutes to do a cycle, with A LOT more water than you’re using. So it’s kinda dissolving the stain in so much water, rather than “scrubbing / scraping” it off. And it’s also because of the detergent, which is really good at chemically making the molecules in the stain (sauce, grease, whatever) NOT stick to the cloth fibers anymore.
Soap in general, that’s what it does. It simply makes dirt or grease stick to itself (the soap), so it unsticks from the cloth fibers and can be carried away by the water.
Most soiling agents that clothes come in contact with (dirt, sweat/oils) will come off with detergent, water, and the mechanical action provided by the agitator (the reciprocating shaft in the center of the drum).
Whether or not a stain will be removed has more to do with what the stain is from and if it’s been allowed time to sit.
It’s unlikely you’ll see a machine remove cooking oil stains that have set in over an 8 hour shift in a kitchen. I have shirts with 15 year old grease stains still on them
You do not need to scrub to remove the dirt. It might be the most efficient way to do it by hand.
Put the shirt in a bowl with warm water, and washing detergent. Use you hand to move in a round, not just spent it around in a constant motion but change its shape all the time with your hands. There are ridges on the inside of the rotation part of a washer to change the shape of the clothes when it rotates
Do that for a long time, we talk about something like an hour and then the detergent and water will have dissolved and removed the stain.
Scrubbing will be more time efficient by hand but it do not mean it is the only way you can do it.
Scrubbing is generally a bad method of removing stains from cloth. It gets some of the surface contaminants, but it pushes the rest deeper into the fabric from whence it will tougher to remove.
ever reach into a top load washer to retrieve an item you forgot, like keys?
notice that your hands feel slippery afterwards? that’s because the laundry detergent is literally eating your skin! That stuff is powerful and will remove stains from parking garage floors and stuff.
so part of the answer is, laundry soap is nasty and eats the stains out of your clothing.
They don’t. The water itself is providing the pressure. Some machines also use agitators for frictional force.
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