Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with clothing and laundry

Shrinkage as a Positive

judomadonna — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:57:22 -0800

After three washes-and-dryings I want some new 100% cotton t-shirts and boxer shorts to keep shrinking but I get the feeling they're not gonna. Am I right? I'm between an XL and XXL when it comes to t-shirts and boxer shorts -- XL is a little too snug and XXL is a little too roomy. I buy XXL in both in the hopes of shrinking them. I wash in hot and blast 'em in the dryer and, yes, there's been shrinkage, but not enough for my liking. After doing laundry last night I tried on one of the t-shirts and pairs of boxers and didn't see/feel a difference. Clothes get to a point where they'll stop shrinking no matter what you do, right? Any suggestions?

How can I keep my clothes from fading?

Four-Eyed Girl — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:25:02 -0800

How can I keep my clothes from fading after washing them? Most of my clothes end up fading over time after they have been washed several times. It is most noticeable with my black clothes, but it also happens with my bright colored clothes. I recently bought some clothes, and I don't want this to happen to them. What can I do to help fight the fading process and keep my clothes looking somewhat new?

More Efficient Laundry System?

jacksides — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:08:54 -0800

How do you keep your laundry system running smoothly in a bi-level (or larger) house? I want to hear how others have set up hampers, etc or otherwise established a system to efficiently move clean and dirty clothes to and from the laundry room. Growing up, we had laundry chutes (one on each floor) that we used to send all of our dirty clothes down to the basement. It was a great system - clothes never piled up anywhere; it was so easy to just throw everything down (and the laundry fairy -- okay, my mom -- did laundry almost every day ... how she kept up with it, I'll never know...).

Now that we have a small family (1 year old + 3 year old + two parents) living in a bi-level townhouse, it seems like clothes pile up in corners constantly (especially upstairs). I've tried putting a hamper on the landing to create a centralized place for the dirty clothes upstairs, but that doesn't seem to be enough (plus, when we bring the full hamper down to the laundry room, it seems to sit down there for awhile ... which means clothes upstairs start piling up on the floor again ... aggggggggggh). When we do get the clothes clean, we tend to use the laundry room as our closets -- just grabbing what we need when we need it ... no one actually wants to put away an armful of hanging clothes or a whole laundry basket. Part of it is laziness, I'm sure, and part of it is that it just seems like I always have a baby on my hip, so having two free hands and a few minutes to go upstairs and put clothes back in my drawers is rare.

This seems simple enough, but I'm sure someone out there has a hack or two. I'd like to hear how other people have set up a productive laundry system -- from how/where you set up your dirty clothes repositories to how often you actually do your laundry. Are you on a schedule? Do you just do it when you run out of clothes? Do you return the clean clothes back upstairs immediately after washing them?

How do you stop clothes dye from bleeding?

twinkles2sf — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:39:34 -0800

How do you stop clothes dye from bleeding? I have a skirt and jacket suit that is vibrant red in color. When I first bought it about a decade ago it would bleed a little onto the sweater I would wear underneath. Now just in the period it takes to try the outfit on my sweater will be red. The label says Dry Clean only so I've never tried washing it in a washer to see if the excess dye will go away, but maybe that's the route I'll have to go? I'm afraid of messing it up. The suit looks fine. It's just if I wear it I can't take the jacket off or everyone will see how red it's changed whatever I'm wearing underneath.
Any suggestions?

Any tried and true solutions/methods for removing deodorant build-up from the armpit area of T-shirts?

karizma — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:35:08 -0800

Any tried and true solutions/methods for removing deodorant build-up from the armpit area of T-shirts? On several of my T-shirts I have a noticeable build-up of deodorant in the armpit area. It makes the fabric somewhat rigid and definitely unsightly. I have tried stain stick, hot water, detergent rubbed into the area, multiple washings, etc. - and nothing seems to work. I really like these shirts and it would be a shame to have to throw them out. Thanks!

How to remove restaurant smells from clothing?

schroedinger — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:30:58 -0800

How do I remove awful, greasy restaurant smells from my clothing? I work eight hours a day at a small, enclosed cafe. I come home smelling of this particular mixture of grease and cafe food (not in a delicious way). It comes off of me in the shower--but after eight months of this the smell seems to be inexorably attached to my clothing. How do I get rid of it? Things I have tried:
- Washing with very hot water and lots of soap
- Baking soda
- Dryer sheets
- Hanging them out to dry in the sun

I pay for laundry, so I am loathe to try out multiple washings every time the clothing needs to be washed. The clothing is colored, so I can't use bleach. Also, I'm allergic to Tide laundry detergent, if that makes any difference.

Is there any way to get around hand washing clothes?

invisible ink — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:17:36 -0800

I recently bought a beautiful burgundy sweater coat. Unfortunately, I failed to notice the wash & care instructions, which state "Hand wash cold/separately." How exactly does one go about hand washing a large piece of clothing? The tag says "93% acrylic, 5% polyester, 2% wool." Is there any other way I can get this garment cleaned? Would Woolite be an option? Dry cleaning?

How can I de-funkify these towels?

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 09:44:55 -0800

How can I de-funkify stinky towels & clothing items? I have some items of clothing--primarily jeans, but also some towels--that have a faint odor of B.O. even after washing & bleaching. This is probably because during hot summer months, I sweat a lot, and these items are used a lot and are often damp. I also probably put off washing them longer than I should. Be that as it may.

Is there any kind of washing or treatment I can do that will get rid of this lingering smell? Even when I bleached the towels in hot water, as soon as they got damp again, the smell was noticable. (I think some kind of skin oil is building up in the towels that is resistant to detergents)

Over the shoulder boulder holders

arcticwoman — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:04:16 -0800

How do you take care of bras so that they stay in the best shape for the longest?

How can I fix stretched-out hand holes on my sleeves?

mikespez — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:04:10 -0800

How can I fix stretched-out hand holes on my sleeves? I have quite a few sweaters and hoodies whose hand-holes are stretched out due to my rolling up my sleeves. Is there any way for me to shrink the holes back to their regular size?

The sweaters and hoodies in question are mostly an 85% cotton, 15% polyester blend.

Why does washing my colored clothes make them blotchy so often?

cadge — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:12:30 -0800

What's causing my clothes to occasionally come out of the wash with blotchy spots where the dye has been lightened/removed? I've noticed that sometimes, my colored clothes come out of the wash with blotches where the dye has been lightened/removed somehow.

Somtimes it seems to happen in sweaty areas (like the neck fold on my turtleneck, turning from camel to a light orange, or the neckline on my summertime shirt), but sometimes it just happens randomly (streaks on the front of my blue t-shirt).

It seems to happen mostly when I use Tide liquid detergent in my parents' washer (not when I use Seventh Generation at the laundromat). If possible I'd like to find a way to work around this while not forcing my parents to purchase a different detergent and not having to lug a thing of Seventh Gen home myself.

Does anyone know why this might be happening? How can I avoid this? I'm losing more shirts than I'd like!

Smelly Silk Sweater

chickletworks — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:12:37 -0800

How do I get the fishy smell out of a silk (well, silk and cashmere blend) sweater? I'm not even sure what's causing it. At first I thought the smell was due to some weird reaction between the dry cleaner's chemicals and my perfume or lotion, but I've since caught a whiff of it around store displays of silk shirts. Getting the sweater wet seems to make the smell worse so Fabreeze isn't much help.

Is there anyone who a.) has experienced this and can tell me I'm not smellucinating and b.) found a way to fix the problem?

Letting go

chicken nuglet — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:24:09 -0800

How do I get my husband to let go of old boxers and socks? My beloved husband refuses to part with his old, ripped up boxer shorts and socks.

The other day while folding laundry, I discover a pair of his boxers with a hole in the back so big I could fit my head through it. Seriously. I assumed that since there was no fabric left to cover his bum, the boxer were useless and threw them away. My husband then proceeded to fish the boxers out of the trash because they were still “wearable.”

I buy him new boxers and socks regularly to replace the old ones but he refuses to let them go. Every time I try to throw out the old clothes, he digs them out the garbage!

Why does my husband insist on keeping these old articles of clothing? Is there anyway I help him move on or should I accept this as a loveable quirk?

How do I get gasoline out of my clothes?

luneray — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 11:20:47 -0800

How do I get gasoline out of my clothes? While I was filling my gas tank last night, I ended up spraying gas all over my jeans and shoes (the pump didn't shut off properly). I used towels to soak up as much gas from my clothes as I could, and when I got home I washed the jeans in the washing machine. But washing didn't seem to make much difference. The jeans still reek nearly as much as they did before I washed them.

Any suggestions?
Hand washing with a lot of detergent?
Air drying until most of the volatiles have evaporated, and then washing again? Hot water? Cold? Something in between?

T-shirt cotton conundrum

everichon — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 08:29:28 -0800

I have a lot of cotton t-shirts, of the medium-to-heavy weight kind that usually have something printed on them. There seem to be two distinct kinds of cotton fabric in the shirts: Good: After a few washes, the shirt becomes soft and kind of broken in. Bad: the shirt never really becomes soft or broken in, and worse, inevitably comes out of the dryer with (clean) lint and cat hair all over it. So I have two questions about this:
1. What accounts for the different outcomes for two 100% cotton shirts?
2. Is there any solution, ASIDE from using fabric softener? Any non-nasty alternatives to fabric softener?

How do permanent creases stay permanent?

rhapsodie — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 13:28:28 -0800

How do permanent creases (not the sewn-in ones) in pants stay permanent? I'm thinking specifically of my husband's work uniform slacks that have these heavy-duty, before-the-dawn-of-time creases down the front and back of each leg. The creases remain after much washing and no ironing.

How DO they do it?