Laundry is one of life’s most time-consuming chores, but it just has to be done. With the rise of the smart home, features on washing machines are becoming more sophisticated than ever before.

In fact, it can actually be quite overwhelming to decide what you need and what will be useful to you.

Most of us just bundle our clothes into the washer, fill the detergent drawer and press the ‘on’ button without giving it much thought. (This is understandable -- nobody wants to waste more mental energy than necessary on doing the laundry.) However, there’s a lot of things that you could probably be doing better to make this tedious task easier and more effective. Here are eight common laundry myths covering everything from fabric softness to lint buildup. .