Which is heavier?

I did my monthly ablutions, and ended up doing my laundry today....Its always amazed me how heavy a month's load of clothes can be, and I began wondering which is heavier...the load of 'dirty' clothes you take to the washer, or the load of supposedly 'clean' clothes one brings back.

On the first pass, it seems obvious that the dirt, sweat and what not your clothes hold before you clean them off might imply that the load you take to the washer is heavier than what you carry back.

If you just look at the load you need to carry, though, you also know you are carrying more trapped 'air', between the threads, as well as the 'balooning' of the clothes.

Your clothes get oxidized a little each time you put them through the drier, adding a few electrons here and there each time, and its possible, nay probable, that you find the clothes heavier out of the drier than when they went in. Also, they are warmer, and from Einstein's "e equals m times c squared" implies that the raised thermal energy of the atoms in the 'clean' clothes might add some mass too...


But are these rather tiny molecular additions and bloated air in mass more than the few millilitres of sweat/dried salt on the clothes?? I dont know. I am gonna weigh them and find out someday :-)