The Duet washer has steam/sanitizing, etc. I never thought to check on whether the dryer could be manually filled with water. I’ll have to do that.
“I’m confused about those of you who leave the door open to collect laundry as it accumulates. Do you just randomly throw laundry in there every time you go down? What if someone put some light clothes in and then someone else threw jeans in.?”
Well, I would wash light clothes and jeans together; I’m not really picky about sorting and amazingly I don’t notice any difference :-). We have a utility sink in our laundry room, next to our w/d. So rags, kitchen towels, etc. tend to accumulate in there til it’s time to do a load. I guess that’s as sloppy as leaving the washer door open 
More on laundry accumulation - for me, it’s very analogous to the dishwasher. Sure, the occasional special pot or fragile glass or something goes in the sink to be washed separately/differently, but in general, everything goes into the d/w as it is used. So for something like a new dark shirt, or a kid’s costume or wool garment or whatever, that wouldn’t be dumped in with the rest, but that’s an occasional situation compared with the rest of the 1-2x daily laundry runs.
I think I read years ago in CR that sorting laundry is generally unnecessary, and I felt validated for my lifetime practice. 
That’s particularly true if you do warm or cool washes, and we even do hot with no issues if the laundry is stinky/sweaty. In fact, and I fear the wrath of the laundry gods even as I type this, you can put a small amount of chlorine bleach in most colored loads if you have a front-loader with the special dispenser, because it’s diluted to such an extent. (Don’t do it with blacks or browns, but ok with medium to light colors, and ok with basically any casual outerwear - in fact, I discovered this when we couldn’t get a winter coat smelling fresh and I was ready to sacrifice it if the bleach didn’t work.)
I use Dr. Brommers liquid castile soap with peppermint essential oil to make things smell fresh. Just use your regular detergent, and add a squirt or two of the Dr. Brommer’s. It’s nice to use for a load of towels.
As for sorting, I think it matters more for the dryer than for the washer. It’s rare for colors to bleed but one heavy towel will keep everything else from getting dry quickly!
@greenwitch - thanks for the recommendation for the soap! I agree about the dryer, but I don’t tend to interrupt the dryer until it thinks it’s all done with everything. If I need something sooner I have been known to break the washer load into a quick first dryer and then the rest of a dryer load.
While I don’t for the most part sort all laundry I have found that if I wash my husbands white tee shirts by themselves they stay white. However if I wash them with colored stuff they end up dingy and no amount of bleach will return them to their original white color.
We have a laundry chute; laundry drops into a large, elevated wooden box in the basement. The next time I go downstairs, I sort the items, placing them into a 3 tiered sorter (plus a separate basket for my husband’s work clothes).
My daughter at college washes everything together, and so far none of her clothes have been ruined or discolored.
I have a laundry chute that goes from my son’s bedroom into a closet in our utility laundry. We moved our son in there at the age of 4 (he shared a room with his twin sister prior to that) and immediately blocked it up as we had visions of twins being dropped down the chute!
I’m a sorting maniac. I’ll sort by color, but I also sort by how delicate something is. Jeans don’t go in with lace camis since they just chew up the camis. I have a rolling laundry cart that gets only the clean clothes, then when I get a second I’ll roll it out in front of the tv and catch up on a show while I hang up all the clothes on the cart, then I’ll hang them all up from there. It’s the only way I’ve found to make laundry not onerous for me, and to not feel guilty about sitting in front of the tv and not doing anything.
I do use the steam dryer anti-wrinkle function fairly often because I loathe ironing and I’ll forget that I left stuff in the dryer and it’ll wrinkle if I forget to set the “no wrinkle” regular setting (it tumbles the clothes until they’re cold). I just re-run it on steam anti wrinkle and it’s amazing how well it works.
Wife was looking at LG top loaders the other day (our washer is living on borrowed time). She is only 5’ 1" tall, and couldn’t reach the bottom of the tub!! Anyone else have this problem? Sales person told her it’s a thing, that some vertically challenged people have to use barbecue tongs to take the last of their laundry out! Really?
I have the Sears version of the LG top loaders. I have the steam option and have used it only once. DIdnt see a great benefit but maybe I didnt do it right?
I am also short, and do have to get on my tiptoes at times to get those last socks from the very bottom. But when the wash is done most everything is up against the sides of the drum and easy to get out.
When we bought a new top-loader washer earlier this year, I checked the depth of all the machines we were considering. If I couldn’t reach bottom, even standing on my toes, the washer was eliminated from consideration. We got a very basic Whirlpool top-loader since there are only 2 of us and not as much laundry as when the kids lived home.
When we looking a couple months ago I was having trouble touching the bottom of the washers. We went ahead and bought one anyway. I thought I was going to have to get some tongs. I took me about 2 weeks to realize that I could reach the clothes IF I turned the drum and took out the clothes closest too me. Once in a while I do end up on my tiptoes to grab a sock…
Just today [literally] we finished our new laundry room and are loving our new LG front load washer and dryer[ got them at fantastic prices at Home Depot 3 weeks ago.
Man! What a difference t makes having front load! so much more useable counter[ or machine] top space!!
Our older washer had crapped out after 25 years of dependable service a month ago, and initially we ran out and bought an open box top load washer, but after realizing that it was going to drive me nts not being able to reach the bottom of the washer, I asked for an early Xmas present- new LR and appliances
After the basement flooded my husband and brother raised the washer and dryer on a concrete pedestal to keep them above any future water line. After that I couldn’t reach the bottom of the washer so I got a little foot stool.