Clothing Care
How to take care of your favorite items to make them last a lifetime
by Carla Farina
One of the lessons that stands out from my decade-plus working in fashion design is less is more. The best editors make the best designers. You have to be able to look at your designs and intentionally strip it down to its simplest form. I have found the same idea applies to many aspects of life. Most important for me now is how to apply less is more to sustainable living.
Buy less.
Choose well.
Love what you have.
Practicing less has left me with more time for enjoying life. Spending time with friends and family, catching up on books or binge-worthy shows, and even writing articles about clothing care for a dope online magazine!
In 2019 I decided to stop buying clothes. Off-brand for a fashion designer, I know. I spent months researching sustainability in fashion to start a children’s clothing brand focused on reuse. It became clear that in order to call for change in others, I had to make changes in my own life first.
Having a closet full of clothes paired with that nagging feeling of “I have nothing to wear” made me want to start my journey with clothing. I took stock of what I had and it was quite clear that I did not need more, I needed to engage my editing superpowers and learn to care for what I have.
Part of caring for clothes is improving laundry habits. My habits have changed a lot in the last year. I try to launder only when needed which is usually after multiple wears...except gym clothes and panties for obvious reasons. The simplest tip I can offer is to pretreat always, spot clean often, and wash only when needed. This habit will go a long way in extending the life of your garments between washes and over a lifetime.
I recently conducted a poll to get an idea of laundry habits and the most common stains. I was happy to find that more than half of those surveyed pretreat stains before laundering. If you are in the other 40% who do not pretreat...you need to start. This simple task will reduce the number of times you need to wash your garments, which is the harshest thing we do to our clothes, as well as saving dollars spent on soaps, energy, and precious water.
A whopping majority of stains from those polled come from pizza. That may be a skewed statistic since I’m in NYC because we have really good pizza. Tied for second place are chocolate and wine, I’m guilty of these! Rounding out third place is coffee stains. All of which will stain permanently if not treated properly.
So you can give up pizza and wine...or keep reading.
Rules to live by
Extending the time between washings.
Don’t rub it in!
Every part of your being will want to grab a napkin and dab or rub the stain. What you are actually doing is pushing the stain deeper into the fibers and making it more difficult to get out. If you are out and cannot treat immediately, the best thing to do is to push the stain out.
Scrape off any excess with a spoon.
Grab one wet tissue and one dry.
Place the dry tissue on the outside of the stain and the wet tissue on the inside and lightly press out.
The dry tissue will absorb the water from the wet one along with some of the stain. Then treat as soon as you can.
2. Always pre-treat stains. Always.
If you are in the habit of throwing stained items in the wash, stop it right now! Some stains need the solution to sit on them for a while to work effectively. Pretreating will help you save water, energy, and detergent since you will be sure the stain is gone before laundering...if you have to launder at all! If you skip this, you may end up getting stuck with the stains if you accidentally dry it too. Which leads me to the next tip.
The coffee stain from above has already been sucked out, I barely let it sit for 10 minutes.
Always air-dry a stained item. Always always.
The heat from the dryer will set the stain, it will never come off. The heat from the sun will also set the stain, so air-dry the items inside to make sure the stain is gone.
To save $$
Use the right amount of detergent.
Using more detergent than recommended will not get your clothes any cleaner, in fact, it has the opposite effect. Using more than the recommended amount will not rinse off properly and will remain on your clothes. This will act as a magnet for dirt. Do a little experiment, wash your hands but do not rinse the soap off. Let your hands dry and you’ll see they dry up very sticky!
To save energy...and more $$
Wash in cold water.
To effectively wash in hot water, the water temperature needs to be between 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. For safety, most home hot water heaters are set at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, so your water is most likely not hot enough. If you need hot water for disinfecting, do it on the stovetop. You will heat only the water you need and make sure the items stay saturated in the hot water for the right amount of time.
To save water...and, even more, $$
Pretreat and rinse
Typically, pretreatments need to stay on items for at least an hour. Instead of throwing pretreated items with your next load, rinse and see if the stain has come off. If not, treat again and let sit longer. Some stains need finesse to come out, most stains eventually will come out if you are patient with them.
My Favorite Pretreat Solution
2 parts Hydrogen Peroxide
1 part liquid blue soap
enough Baking Soda to make a paste (typically equal to 1part)
Once hydrogen peroxide is exposed to sunlight it begins to decompose, so, unfortunately, you will have to make a fresh solution each time you need it. It only takes a minute if you keep the materials on hand.
Scrape off any excess material from the stain with a spoon.
Turn the item inside out and rinse the stain with cold water, this pushes out any larger leftover particles.
Back to the outside of the item, apply the solution directly on to the stain. Lightly massage it in so it works its way into the fibers.
Let it sit for at least an hour.
Turning the item inside out again, rinse the solution out with cold water, and check the stain.
If it is still there, repeat but let it sit overnight.
I recreated the three common stains to show how well this treatment works. The wine and coffee washed off after an hour of pretreating. The pizza needed to sit overnight, I had nuked it to make sure it was hot enough to cause a stain. The cheese ended up deep in the fibers but did come off.
Always test a small area of the garment to make sure colors will not fade with this solution.
If you’re like me and want to go deep on these ingredients and a couple of others, read on!
Things to have on hand
Lemons
Distilled White Vinegar
Baking Soda
Hydrogen Peroxide
That liquid blue soap
Bright and White
Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) is a bleaching agent, it helps to whiten. It is not as harsh as Chlorine Bleach and is used as the main ingredient in many color-safe or oxygen bleaches. It is created by adding an extra Oxygen (O) molecule to Water (H2O). The extra Oxygen is loosely bonded and breaks down quickly when exposed to light back into simply Air and Water. There is currently research being done with solar-powered factories in order to make this versatile chemical with just Sun, Air, and Water!
Chlorine bleach kills bacteria and viruses fast and that is really amazing. It breaks down into water and salt. While some say that “it’s just some salt” down the drain, I argue that too much salt is not good for anyone...or anything. Use very sparingly, specifically for disinfecting after a family member has been ill.
Neither Hydrogen Peroxide or Chlorine Bleach are naturally occurring substances. They both need to be created in a factory that uses energy and water in the manufacturing process.
I like using Hydrogen Peroxide because it works so well in such small amounts.
Sweat and Smells
Lemons are amazing for removing those pesky sweat stains on light and white items. Squeeze juice right on the stained area and place the item out in the sun for one hour. The acid in lemon juice breaks down the deodorant and the sun has a natural ability to whiten. To help lower your carbon footprint, look for local lemons. You can also grab organic if that is an option in your markets. Store them in the fridge to extend their life.
When I was a kid I would get carsick, it was not a motion thing because I loved roller coasters. In a car, though I would get sick...bleh...even when going on short rides. After washing, strong smells like upchuck and sweat can linger. Distilled White Vinegar is the secret weapon. First, follow the steps to pretreat and prevent stains. Then, soak the item in water and vinegar for at least an hour. Don’t worry, the vinegar smell will dissipate...this works well on carpets too if you have a kid or college student at home.
There are two main ways of manufacturing Distilled White Vinegar, synthetic or fermented. Both can create the final product that is 5% acetic acid, the chemical name of vinegar. In the US, the FDA maintains that acetic acid that is synthetically manufactured and diluted to 5% cannot be sold as vinegar. Rest assured if you are buying a product labeled as Distilled White Vinegar, you are buying the fermented kind. There is a big brand out there toting their Distilled White Vinegar is and has always been natural, but remember that the word natural is not regulated. The other downside, it comes in plastic bottles. Try to locate a bulk shop near you that may refill your empty bottles.
NaHCO3
Sodium Bicarbonate, more commonly known to us as Baking Soda, is a naturally occurring mineral substance that is mined in the USA, mostly in Wyoming and Colorado. Mineral deposits formed after natural bodies of water evaporated. You know the stuff, you probably have a box of it in your fridge. It is great at absorbing smells in the air and so much more. While Sodium Bicarbonate does occur naturally, it has to be mined from underground by either a dry or wet process. The dry process consists of the deposits being scraped off and carried out of the earth. The wet process involves water that is flushed into then out of the earth. Both, of course, have an impact on the environment, but as a naturally occurring substance, you are not risking washing toxins down your drain and into your local water supply. If you are worried about depletion, it is estimated that in Wyoming alone there is enough to supply the world with Baking Soda for over 2,000 years. Don’t waste it, but don’t sweat it.
The liquid blue soap
The magic behind getting foods and oil off of pots, hands, and clothes are known to scientists as surfactants. This is the magic behind soaps and detergents. They surround the dirt, the dirt sticks to the surfactants, and lets go of the items you are cleaning. When you rinse, they all flow merrily down the drain. The challenge is that these magic mitesdo not know to stop working once they have been rinsed off. They are after all not intelligent life, just molecules scientists bonded together to help us clean up. If surfactants end up in a water supply or natural body of water they will attach to fish and vegetation and remove natural protections on their surfaces, although that likelihood is very low.
Yes, the blue soap has a percentage of ingredients derived from petroleum. Yes, there are non-petroleum brands out there but the greener brands so not work as well in removing all stains. If you choose to stick with a non-petroleum product, you can always embroider over stains that do not come off completely.
Cleaning the Cleaning Machine
Even though you pull clean clothes out of there, you still need to clean it. Run an empty load with 1 cup of Distilled White Vinegar in the wash cycle and ½ cup of Distilled White Vinegar in the rinse cycle. It may sound counter-intuitive to run an empty load to save water and energy. Hear me out. The machine needs to be cleaned from residues like soap build-up and water minerals. Using a dirty machine will lower the performance and overall life of your washer so clean it at least once a year.
Carla Farina is the founder of eddys brand, a sustainable children’s wear company focused on reuse. Tiny sweaters with a big impact, follow her journey on Instagram.