Adding towel to dry a fitted sheet; bedspread

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stainfighter

stainfighter

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Apr 22, 2005
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I like to dry the bottom sheet of our bed separately while doing other cleaning. In the past I'd have to stop doing cleaning to go check on it and find it balled up. I know, some will say if you put in other things it won't ball up. However I'll usually find a stray sock or some such stuck in a corner which I find frustrating, requiring further drying...
So today I added a clean, dry towel with the just-washed fitted sheet and in only 12 minutes it was perfectly dried and not balled up, ready to start making the bed.
I also like to dry the duvet coverlet separately and did the same thing, no balling up and dried in 25 minutes.
 
I dry the king sheets separately. I put the pillow cases in with the fitted sheet. If I don't set the timer for too long (around 12 minutes or so), the sheets do not ball up. The HOH and the Kenmore combo were the only two machines that did not ball up the sheets when I dried them together.
 
 

 

In the past I would wash the sheets together with other things, but grew tired if finding other items all balled up in the sheets and still damp because of it.  So now I wash only sheets & pillow cases (Cal King set and 4 pillow cases) together.   Occationally I'll find the sheets a little balled up, but they're always dry.   Also occationally a pillow case or two will be rolled up in a fitted sheet, but it's usually dry most of the time.    BTW I always use an "autodry" setting.

 

Yesterday I moved the '61 GE combo over to the "wet wall" (with hot & cold) and washed a very mixed load, including a twin sheet set (then dried in a Maytag big load dryer) with no tangling problems with either wash or dry.   The 2nd load in the GE combo was a Cal King sheet set, a Queen sheet set and 6 pillow cases.   I could see before the main wash was finished they were all tangled and balled up together.   Then at the end of the wash I quickly discovered the drain pump quit working, so I spent about 10 minutes un-tangling everything before moving the dripping wet load to a Frigidaire FL for rinses and spins.   Once finished I dried the whole load in a Maytag big load dryer with good results and no balling.

 

Kevin
 
I find results vary depending on what the sheets are made of.  Without fail, if I dry our king size set of fleece sheets in the Affinity, they will form into a single ball.  Sometimes they'll be completely dry even in that state, other times not.  I may try the trick with the towel, but the fleece sheets should be going into storage soon now that the house isn't very cold at night.

 

The problem isn't as bad with cotton/blended sheets, but with warm weather here I prefer to line-dry those anyway.
 
Speed Queen

I will generally load the fitted sheet in a cluster at the back of the drum. Then cluster the top sheet in the front with the pillow cases. They never seem to ball up this way.

Malcolm
 
BTW, this is where a variabale speed dryer really excells. Some older WP dryers had a speed control. If you set it for the faster speed, it tumbled at a speed which kept the sheets closer to the sides of the drum so they did not have the chance to start rolling. I noticed by watching my WP dryer with the window in the door that where you get into trouble drying sheets in it is at the exhaust grill. As the sheets get a little dry and weigh a little less, they get pulled against this grill which starts the balling up because it interrupts the tumbling pattern. The solution is to turn the drying speed to "Gentle" if your dryer has such a switch or make sure that the lint screen is ready to be cleaned before putting sheets in, both of which reduce the airflow and prevent the sheets from being pulled against the grill.

You would think that with all of the electronics in use today that dryers could scan the tumbling to make sure things are falling through the air flow pattern and speed up the drum if large items like sheets start balling up. If that is too hard, they could just have a faster tumble speed for sheets and a slower one for small loads or light-weight things.

With other dryers it's not so simple. Even very careful loading can leave you with rolled sheets. The Filtrator is famous for delivering sheets rolled up like cigars.
 
I have a Bosch Nexxt Washer and Dryer. I must say that balling up of sheets, quilts, blankets, etc is my number one complaint with these machines. It seems no matter what I do, I get a big ball of sheets or my quilt. The quilt is heavy and thick so drying other items seems to crowd the dryer and the end up with poor results. Also the washer struggles to finally balance the load to spin if anything else is in the machine. I would love to get dryer that reverses. I found the TOL GE dryer does but with all I read about GE quality, I am reluctant. Plus spending another $2000+ on a washer and dryer set would get me in trouble with the other half ;)
 
 
Been 7-1/2 years since I last had sheets or quilts ball-up in my dryer.  Rarely any small items caught in a fitted sheet -- neither pillow cases, nor casual/oxford shirts which I occasionally wash with a set of sheets for being equivalent fabric weight/type.
 

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