Washing for wellbeing
When you're in the midst of doing a pile of laundry, the idea that it might be directly beneficial to your wellbeing might sound like a hard sell: even if you're using appliances that make it as easy as possible.
However, the benefits that doing your laundry in the right way can have on your health and wellbeing have been researched and proven extensively. And for us, it's particularly important: even hearkening back to the thing that inspired our founder to make his very first washing machine. Namely, improving his mother's wellbeing and quality of life, easing a strenuous load and giving her more time and energy to spend on the things she really wanted to do.
What's lurking in your linen?
What's lurking in your linen?
Apart from the psychological benefit of slipping into a freshly-laundered favourite outfit, there's an obvious and verifiable health benefit to doing your laundry regularly. Properly-cleaned clothes and linen are far less likely to harbour dirt, debris and small creatures that become embedded in the fibres of your clothing every day. These are the things that can trigger common allergies.
As well as the various nasties listed above, allergies can also be set off and worsened by residues of the chemicals found in laundry detergent and fabric softeners we rely on to actually get them clean. And all of these things can get deep into fabrics and end up being quite difficult to get rid of – in the case of the chemicals, they'll even find their way into your clothing in the washing machine, which is really the last place you'd expect your laundry to get dirtier.
As a result, using a standard laundry programme might not be the best way for allergy sufferers to alleviate their problems.
Help is at hand
Dedicated allergy programmes – like the one you can find on our (whichever product you wish to promote) – address this problem directly. They introduce more water, more activity and more time into the washing cycle, enabling better rinsing and cleaning not only the clothes, but the whole environment inside the machine.
Longer, more energetic periods of movement and smart mechanical actions can be used to agitate the clothing more effectively, giving a better wash and a better rinse. As with general hygiene programmes, used for deep-cleaning clothes, the selected temperature might also be held for longer to ensure that – for example – bacteria and other organisms are really eliminated.
The upshot of this is that the clothes are cleaned much more thoroughly than with a standard wash, the drum and detergent drawer of the machine remain cleaner and less likely provide a new home for anything unpleasant, and the water used in the process is, post-rinse, much purer.
Clean machine
An effective drum-cleaning programme is also essential, and should be used frequently – on ASKO machines, once a month is ideal. This will make sure that the whole environment you're putting your clothes in is really clean and free from textile fibres, detergent or softener build-up, dirt and debris, dead skin and bacteria – all the way from the drum to the hoses. Our machines are built to remind you when cleaning programmes should be run.
Allergy and hygiene programmes aren't just useful for people who suffer from allergic reactions: they can also be used to get baby clothes really clean, for instance, or kitchen linens that come into contact with raw ingredients.
All ASKO washing machines in the Logic and Style ranges are equipped with allergy programmes. And we know they work, because we test them exhaustively. It's something that gives us confidence, letting us find what's causing a problem in the first place, isolate what needs to be done to fix it, and then see if it really works.
This is why we test every appliance we make. Not only is it a source of professional pride for us, but it's also something we take personally. The discomfort of allergies is something that most of us can all too easily relate to.
You can find out more about our laundry appliances – designed, built and tested to take care of you and your loved ones – here (link to page you'd like to link to).
