Cycles vs Temperatures

A recent bad experience (I fried all of our fleece blankets) lead me to dig deeper into the meaning of the various cycles on a clothes dryer. It's always been a mystery to me why appliance manufacturers can't say Hot and Warm rather than Whites and Colors and Permanent Press. I mean, c'mon, comparing the color of your clothing to it's need for ironing is comparing apples to oranges anyway. So why don't they just tell you what the temperature is?

The reason is that it's not that simple. Whites and Colors, or Normal, or whatever your dryer calls it is basically Hot; Delicates is basically Warm; Fluff (my favorite cycle) is no heat at all, just air. But Permanent Press is Hot followed by some cool-down time so that your clothes aren't hot when the dryer stops tumbling.

The reason behind this is that wrinkles are caused by pressure and heat. Pressure and heat are also what's involved in ironing, so this makes sense. The cool-down time at the end of the Permanent Press cycle takes away the heat so that only pressure remains when it stops tumbling making wrinkles less likely. Don't ask me why they called it Permanent Press. If the press were permanent you wouldn't need any help keeping the wrinkles out.

As for fried fleece: you can brush out the really prickly parts with a fine stiff brush. I used a fingernail brush. Please note that this will damage your blanket to some degree, but then again what use is a prickly fleece blanket? Unfortunately your blanket will never be quite as soft as it once was.

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