Keep Your Clothes From Wearing Out By Ironing Instead Of Washing

If there’s one good reason to do the sniff test, it’s this: Washing and drying your clothing after each wear is one of the quickest ways to wear those outfits out. Yes, there are ways to improve your laundry skills, but you’re still shoving your favourite duds into a machine to get agitated — yes, that’s what it’s called — and then into a different machine to get blasted with heat.

Image via flickr.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/03/how-to-stop-destroying-your-clothes-in-the-wash/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/kukzwiwtevrvs5fhbjzt.png” title=”How To Stop Destroying Your Clothes In The Wash” excerpt=”Theoretically, it’s better to spend more on quality, but that’s only true if the quality item lasts. I used to have a bad habit of tossing my clothes into the dryer without giving it much thought. If you buy quality, this is an expensive mistake. Here’s how to take better care of your clothes.”]

You do know what all that lint you pull out of the dryer actually is, right? Bits of fabric fibres from your clothes. Even if your shirts didn’t shrink in the wash, they still literally got smaller.

But I get it. You want to wash that outfit not necessarily because it is dirty, but because it looks dirty. Or, more accurately, like you spent a whole day wearing it. Big ol’ creases at the elbows and the hip joints, with a nice wrinkle across the front from all those hours sitting at a desk.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/07/what-to-do-throughout-the-day-to-keep-sitting-from-killing-you/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/nefrdxefruiglkoc7kbs.jpg” title=”What To Do Throughout The Day To Keep Sitting From ‘Killing’ You ” excerpt=”We’ve all heard the bad news that sitting will kill you. That might be a slight exaggeration, and hey, we’re all going to die someday, after all. But our chair-loving lifestyle isn’t helping us live any longer, that’s for sure. It’s associated with everything from cardiovascular disease to type 2 diabetes and even cancer.”]

And yeah, you don’t want to wear that again without addressing those issues. But washing isn’t always the answer. When the weather is cool as it is now, you can employ one of my favourite fashion-preserving habits: Ironing clothes instead of washing them.

Yes, you can do some serious damage to your clothing with an iron. However, as long as you keep your iron at the appropriate temperature for the fabric and don’t, like, leave the iron resting against your clothing as you go to check Twitter, your clothes should leave the ironing board wrinkle-free, refreshed, and ready to wear.

Which is the same result you’re trying to achieve with the washer/dryer, only without the agitation — or the “high efficiency spin cycle”, if you have a newer machine — and the lint. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as “iron lint”, after all.

(I’d make a joke about ironing being your own personal “dry cleaning”, but you do use the steam and spray functions on your iron, right?)

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/06/how-to-properly-iron-shirts-pants-and-skirts/” thumb=”https://img.youtube.com/vi/uDqpClvQKkM/0.jpg” title=”How To Properly Iron Shirts, Pants And Skirts” excerpt=”Ironing clothes is one of those tasks that has a tendency to be a bit terrifying, but worry not, it just seems overly complicated. Here, we’ll break it down into the three simplest, most common cases. Shirts, pants and skirts. Some fabric types might need special attention, but other than that it’s all pretty much the same.”]

So before you toss that shirt into the wash, check to see if it’s really dirty. Did you spill coffee on it? Was it a particularly sweaty day? DOES IT SMELL? Give it a wash.

But if your clothing just looks rumpled or wrinkled, give it an iron instead. Those fabric fibres will get to cling to life for a little bit longer, and you’ll get clothes that look like they have never been worn.