There are a few tricks to washing clothes if you don’t have a water softener, from combating crunchiness to avoiding residue and staining. Hard water is just water that contains a higher amount of minerals, specifically dissolved calcium and magnesium. To keep your clothes feeling soft, you have to do what you can to neutralize those minerals, and that’s where vinegar comes in. Add a half cup of white, distilled vinegar to your final rinse. To get rid of hard water deposits between washings, run an empty load with hot water and 1-3 cups of vinegar in it every few weeks. There are also some laundry detergents that are actually designed to use with hard water. Just look for detergents with a low pH, such as Tide Coldwater Liquid Detergent or Arm & Hammer Plus OxiClean.
