"Good laundering doesn't take any more time than terrible laundering— so you may as well learn to do it right," says author Cheryl Mendelson. Most households do a better job separating trash into color-coded bins than they do clothes to be washed— witness the pink gym socks and the wool sweater shrunk to Barbie-doll size. "You can't wash everything together," says Mendelson, "but you don't need to be a fanatic either." Put the whites in one pile, the dark colors in another, and the bright colors in a third. Reserve a special load for extra-dirty clothes "so that if you're a gardener or a car mechanic you don't end up making everything else dirty or greasy." Be on the offensive to prevent lint from covering everything. Some clothes— chenille bathrobes, corduroys, old towels— are lint givers. Others, like anything polyester, are lint takers. "Put the givers in with the takers and you'll have to wash the whole load over," says Mendelson.