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Clothing Care Tips - How to Make Your Fashion Last Longer

By: Hendrik Pohl

Clothes can be very delicate things. Even the priciest and most exquisitely made piece of men's fashion is still susceptible to the threat of shrinkage and discoloration. If you're like most people, you'll want every article of clothing you have to last as long as it possibly could. Here's how you can help make that happen.

Soap Stories
As necessary as soap might be in the washing and cleaning process, it could also pose a grave threat to your clothes. Harsher industrial strength soaps can discolor your clothes, and that great shirt you just bought could come out of the wash in a very different hue from when it went in.

If milder soap is an option for you, do it for the sake of your clothes (if not for your skin). And regardless of whether you use a machine or wash your clothes by hand, you should never, ever let the soap come into direct contact with any colored items. Bar soaps are a bad idea; opt for powdered or liquid soaps instead, and let the soap mix with the wash water first before you put the clothes in there.

What a Softie
You may also want to take it easy with the fabric softener, whether that means the liquid or the sheet variety for you. The chemicals in fabric softeners have an effect on the fabric that makes it softer, but can also knock the color out of it or wreck the threads altogether.

Nowadays, more than a few manufacturers offer specially formulated fabric softeners for colored and dark clothes. It's a worthy investment, especially when you consider how much longer the colors will stay on your clothes. Sport clothes with special wicking properties, meanwhile, shouldn't touch fabric softeners at all. The chemicals in fabric softeners rob your t-shirts and shorts of their sweat-wicking abilities.

Take Care with the Temperature
Here's another iffy component of the laundry equation. The temperature of the water that you use for your cotton tees, for example, could render your new sweater obsolete. When it comes to washing clothes, temperature is yet another thing you should be careful about.

Every article of clothing in your closet comes with care instructions, and those include a word or two about the ideal temperature of the laundry water. If you can't find those instructions or aren't sure about how hot things should be, use water that's in the room temperature to cool range. That's generally the safest for clothes, both in terms of keeping them from shrinking and losing their colors.

Special Treatment
Do you want your threads to go even further? There are a couple of special steps you could take to keep them looking new for longer.

Try, for example, to explore the many uses of vinegar in the laundry room. Aside from knocking out countless stubborn smells, soaking new colored items in vinegar before their first washing helps them keep their colors. It's a good idea for bright colored shirts or that pair of jeans with the perfect fading and wash.

Having a drying room is also a good idea. Although the smell of sun-dried laundry is one that few people can resist, too much sun also knocks out the shade of your clothes bit by bit. A drying room that exposes your clothes to just heat should get everything dry in the right color.

Close all the fastenings, including zippers, Velcro, and buttons, prior to washing them. And if you're going to launder colored items, you'll want to turn them inside out before chucking them into the soapy water. Those practices will keep your stuff from warping and discoloring, respectively, during the washing process.

Yes, making your clothes last longer is tedious. You have to religiously practice all the methods described above every time you wash. Remember, a single mishap is all it'll take for that $100 shirt to become a $2 discolored piece of rag.

Article Source: http://www.newarticledaily.com

Pohl is a regular contributor with articles on mens fashion. Besides writing for online publications he also writes for his own mens fashion blog. Pohl is also the owner of the internets premiere neck tie and bowtie store: www.ties-necktie.com/

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