Laundry pictograms: Do you know all the care instructions for your clothes?

There is a household appliance in our house, the operation of which regularly leads to encounters of the third kind. A caring, compassionate partnership turns into a battle with the dragon.

Now I am not a Siegfried who sees it as his calling to challenge dragons. But my refusal to engage with the Clothes to take a closer look at them before I put them in the washing machine really makes my wife spit fire.

Many a dragon fight could have been avoided if I had taken a look at the care label. But you don't always understand everything you see.

And the suggestion that something different is written on these scraps of fabric is unfortunately no longer valid. The care symbols have now been standardized internationally and were introduced in 1963 – not long ago, but well before I was born.

Until the mid-1950s, textiles were made almost exclusively from natural fibers such as cotton and linen. Which I think is good. And the two washing programsthat were sufficient at the time are also familiar to me: 95 °C for white laundry and 60 °C for coloured laundry.

At the beginning of the 1960s, however, chemical fibres were developed, new finishing processes for natural fibres were introduced and sophisticated manufacturing techniques were also added.

In 1963, the International Textile Care Labelling Organisation introduced care symbols to make handling of the new textiles easier. The organisation was renamed Ginetex in 1975. The care symbols were soon adopted as a global standard in ISO 3758.

My wife doesn't know any of this. But, to my chagrin, she knows most of the care instructions inside out: To avoid the same fate as me, it's best to take a screenshot or photo of the table with the care instructions on this page. Believe me: something like this can save the peace in your marriage.