Saving Energy in the Home - washing clothes

Like the law of traffic that says the number of cars expands to fill the roads available, just think of London's M25, there seems to be a similar one for laundry.  The number of clothes to be washed expands to keep the washing machine busy.  If it's so easy to wash, why not just wear things once and then clean them so your clothes are always fresh and clean.

The article: http://www.physorg.com/news112154678.html asks if we spend less time doing the washing than 100 years ago.

I remember with some fondness, the first washing machine I had, a little twin tub where you put the washing in one side, ran a very quick cycle, about 10 mins I think, put the clothes in the the other side to spin and that was it!  It was more effort, but if you spent an hour doing the washing that was a lot of washing!  I now have two washing machines, yes two, and there is a good reason for this.

I have a conventional washing machine that gets used about twice a month, overnight, to do delicates.  The other is a big top loader with no heating element.  When I have a bath I can divert the bath water to the washing machine for the wash cycle and rinse with cold, which is, I've been told, efficient for removing detergent anyway.

So if we used recycled water to wash our clothes and only washed them when they were dirty, how much energy could we save?

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