I used one last week to wash all the new red clothing from Christmas. I used Shout brand. The sheet started white and ended up bright pink to light red so I know it did some catching and that red-with-big-white-dots flannel item I washed, still has white dots. My college student uses them whenever he makes a full load with whatever colors he has that are dirty. His loads are just light or dark regardless of exact color.
I have mixed colors and whites for 20 years now with no problem. The only exception would be a new red item. Not sure what is so hard about laundry these days. Wash, dry, fold. Repeat.
Once things have been washed a few times, the only sorting I do is by weight because heavier clothes take longer to dry. White, light, bright, dark, it doesn’t matter. It all gets washed in cold. My kids have been doing their own laundry for many years now, even before they started high school. It’s not hard. Put the clothes in the wash, put in a Tide pod, add some fabric softener, set to cold and go. Once the cycle is done put in the dryer. They don’t have any clothes that require special handling.
When doing laundry in a communal facility do kids ever find that any of their clothes get stolen?
We do lights and dark too but separate “silky” items like lululemon and dressy tops so they don’t get shed on
@TiggerDad : Last year someone posted that his/her son from a Midwest state with perfect Math 800 SAT II and 5 on Calculus BC got a C on the first math course he took in his first semester in Princeton. (Well, you can find the link at one of my posts but the original post has since been deleted :-/) The problem is that people only know their grades in January. In case there is any surprise at final grades, there is no time to recover emotionally. I don’t think grade deflation is the right words to describe the difficulty of Princeton courses. I think some of the courses are unnecessarily difficult. (I have good reference points to state this.) Our own life experience is that one’s relative standing in the classes during the first semester can be a very good predictor of future performance for the next 7 semesters assuming the student is taking a mix of relatively hard and relatively easy courses. For premed, the goal of the first semester is to estimate the number of geniuses in the top pack. The number can be big in Princeton, which is not good for premed. We keep track of the median and standard deviations of all the hard courses at my kid’s school and are surprised the number of geniuses exceed our expectation. Of course, for some courses like math, it seems that there are few in the top pack. For orgo II, we were surprised the number of students who are doing quite well in exam#1 (covering spectra) is relatively large. However, in exam#2 and exam#3, the median keep going lower and lower while my kid is doing better and better.
Regarding math classes. I expect top schools to have more material/more difficult calculus than offered at the HS/AP or even typical college. UW-Madison does. I also suspect one reason students may start out well in some classes is that they already know a lot from HS- it gets more difficult when new material is presented. Some students do not have the study habits they need- too much misuse of time…
Celebrating a kid’s completing courses required for medical school? Wow. I would have taken that vacation just to take it. Wonder if the student will succeed in getting into a medical school? I do not think the vacation rationale fits the poster’s justification criteria. I was a chemistry major who did become an MD, even today less than half (1/3?) of premed students get into a medical school. Harder for us women in my day, btw. Most physicians are not geniuses as well. Most are hard workers- look at the grad students for the most intelligent thinkers. It takes willingness to memorize much more than the ability to think outside the box.
More than enough said.
Premed applicants from Ivies (meaning they survive weed-out) have more than 85% success rate. It is something to be celebrated.
Blending my kid’s experience with some relatives experience, they expected math to be a lot harder at college than in HS, but I think were shocked at just how much harder. The college exams quickly separated out those kids with inherent math skills from the kids who made As in HS by studying hard.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
While the topic of winter break getaways is fascinating, it’s far from on-topic to the OP. And given that many of the OT posts had more shameless product placements than the Transformer franchise, I have edited/deleted.
My daughter discovered if she hogged the washer and dryer at school like she does at home (ie leaving it in there forever) it ends up on the floor. She is much faster at the chore now. 
:))
What- you didn’t just dump her clothes as well? Or at least remove them and out of your way. My school’s dryers were free, washers cost money so at least no one stole drying time.
I remember dryers that took about twice as long per load as washers. Since the shared laundry rooms in dorms, etc. tended to have equal numbers of dryers as washers, there tended to be “traffic jams” where wash loads were done and the owners were waiting for a dryer that was still in use.