Unless you have a food fight/battle at the party, linens and table clothes coming from a regular dinner party hardly enters in my badly stained/higly soiled category....especially if washed the day after or as soon as you take off the table, I usually wait until I have a full load, they never goes alone..normal spots from spilled food and wine or coffee, and lips food from napkins usually does in a normal 40 degrees celsius cycle just fine with a good detergent, or low end one with help of additives, granted that much depends on how old stains are and what type they're...if you are having a bourgignon and you get so many oil spots and drops on the table, I think you can even forget a cold wash and you might better go toward 40+ degrees celsius, same is for a fat peperonata with sausages in it, grease will not get removed so well in cold as it will in warmer temps, especially red dyed (fats gets color from peppers and tomatoes) animal lard from pork like in case of peperonata ( I found that pork lard and shortenings, and margarines often needs warmer/hotter temps than simple oils like olive or seeds does ) cold wash indeed might do well for a minestrone soup stain, or stock stain or starchy light gravies..or lighter/easier stains generally....especially if fresh and washed immediately, in booth the cases, the "age" of the stains plays an important factor.
Motor oil soiled suits, kitchen dirts from cloths including cleaning spillngs , big pools of pasta sauce oil, fats and greases of any type from grillng to frying from kitchen cloths (also litterally soaked in oil/ frying drypping) and towels , kitchen rags/knots/cloths (I use these three words to mean the sams thing) soaked with parsley juice from mincing, ( yes, odd, but I have a technique to make garnishment dried parsley, you need to squeeze it's juice into a rag to avoid it to rot and dulling in air drying process, this way it stays brillant green), kitchen jackets and aprons (many chefs use aprons to clean dry their hands while cooking to avoid running to the sink every time you touch something), cleaning cloths for outside (smog build up on windows, tables and so forth) etc .....are what I'd define badly stained, then it can even reach extreme cases like being litterally soaked in dirt, also depending on dirts types, like a whole bucket of pasta sauce falling against you from the refrigerator (yes that happened) or a compressor's motor oil tank cork exploding and spraying motor oil everywhere at you (happened last week where I work, I have pics! LOL), etc....and really doubt they might get clean by using coldwater, not even lukewarm water, let alone just by soaking them without mechanical action.
In my household we don't use kitchen paper for anything, you don't find it, I don't mind washing as I enjoy it, and it costs less using cloths, , we do everything with cloths, cleaning, draining fried stuff, drying spilled stuff etc,..washed an reused, the only paper we use is in the bathrom for obvious reasons, toilet tissue...for all the rest, clothes.
Never tried one of those coldwater detergents, but I tried a few Japanese ones (Attack and Japan Ariel) that are supposed being the same thing as those coldwater products, since Japanese are "cold wash" people...
They were better than your average universal detergent, but no more good than TOL regular offerings, of course not able to perform as well in coldwater as anyone does in hot...
[this post was last edited: 6/3/2014-06:18]
