I separate the laundry by type and color 1. whites and light colors 2. medium colors 3. red bright colors and black and dark blue dark colors unless some of the reds or darks are new or I know their colors run. Then I would separate 3 into two loads of red and dark. For the clothes in color category 3, I use Woolite wash for dark colors but for the others, I use Tide or Cheer for mine or my husband's clothes, or All Free and Clear for my daughter's laundry.
For stains, I have a variety of tools including OxiClean, Biz, Carbona stain remover, Undo, Off, Chlorox bleach pen, chlorine bleach, a variety of brands of stain sticks, a bar of FelsNaphtha, and many others.
I pretreat stains, put in the detergent with the clothes and fabric softener into the dispenser, start the machine and add the other clothes in the load, then add the pretreated stain clothes last.
In this very dry climate, I use fabric softener fairly often on clothing, but not on towels or cleaning cloths.
I hang up swimsuits, bras and panties rather than putting them in the dryer and if the clothing is all cotton, all linen, or something else that would need ironing, I put it into the dryer only long enough for it to get hot and de-wrinkled, then I hang it up on a wooden or plastic hanger, smooth it out, and let it finish drying on the clothesline so I won't have to iron it. I try to remove the rest of the clothing from the dryer as soon as possible after it dries so it won't wrinkle and I hang it up.