Damaged Clothing
Chlorine Bleach or Other Chemical Damage
Getting bleach or other chemicals on clothing can be a disaster. Things like undiluted chlorine bleach, battery acid, certain hair products, nail polish remover and a whole host of other things can seriously damage your laundry, and there’s no way to repair it. It’s best to store these things away from your clothing and handle chlorine bleach very carefully around your laundry machines.
Here are a few other tips to help prevent chemical damage:
- Follow care tags on garments for chlorine bleach instructions, making sure chlorine bleach doesn’t come into direct contact with fabrics. You could also use a laundry detergent with Bleach Alternative as a safe alternative to chlorine bleach.
- Always dilute chlorine bleach with water before adding to the wash load and use the chlorine bleach dispenser, if available.
- If chlorine bleach is used for soaking, rinse the fabric thoroughly after the soak before adding the item to the wash load.
- When performing car repairs or using hair dyes and perms, protect your clothes by wearing a smock.
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When using acne cream, thoroughly wash your face before drying to avoid getting any cream on your towel.
Pilling
It’s natural for fabrics to wear out over time. Pilling is when tiny fibers in the fabric ball up on the surface, giving a rough look and texture that can be aggravated by the friction of excessive washing and drying.
Pilling can be removed by brushing, cutting, shaving, or picking pill balls from fabrics. However, be careful doing this to avoid accidentally cutting or weakening the fabric.
You can’t stop fabrics from pilling forever, but you can help reduce it by:
- Turning items inside out before washing and drying
- Using a mesh laundry bag to keep items from rubbing together as much in the washing machine
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Line drying delicate items
Fabric Softener Stains
Spotting on clothes due to use of a fabric softener is not common but if it occurs it is fairly simple to deal with. If spotting occurs, wet the garment and rub with a mild bar soap on the affected area. Rinse off the soap or rewash if wanted. For more stubborn stains, pre-treat the stain with regular liquid detergent and rewash in the warmest water that is safe for the fabric according to the manufacturer’s instructions in the care label.
How to avoid fabric softener staining?
- Do not apply fabric softener directly onto clothes
- Do not overfill washer with clothes and make sure to adjust the washer’s settings for the appropriate load size
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If using your machine’s center post dispenser, add a capful of water into the dispenser with your liquid fabric softener
Water Damage
Floods and excess water can damage not only your home but also your clothing and other washables. It may take a little work, but you may be able to salvage clothing that has been damaged by water.
First assess the damage on the clothing to determine which items are too badly damaged to be saved. Mildew can be very difficult to get out, so if you have clothing that has a good deal of mildew on it, you may need to get rid of it.
- Wash items as quickly as you can in the warmest water safe for the clothing. Please be sure to sort the laundry as they normally would (whites, lights and darks).
- Be sure the product is well dissolved in the water before adding garments. There are products on the market that claim to remove mildew. It may be helpful to try one of these as well.
- Five minutes into the wash cycle, add chlorine bleach if it is safe for the fabric
Following this procedure, wash the items as many times as needed. You may need to wash several times in order to get dirt and other stains out.
Finally, air dry rather than using a dryer unless you are completely satisfied with the cleaning. Using the dryer before this can cause stains to set in permanently.
Smoke Damage
People who have quit smoking or had to deal with a fire in their home know it can be hard to salvage smoke-damaged clothing. Fortunately, it’s not impossible. You will need to sort your clothing fairly heavily, though, since there are so many factors involved.
Some things will need to be dry cleaned, but you do not want to take these to a normal dry-cleaning service. Make sure that the dry-cleaning service that you are dealing with has experience in dealing with smoke-damaged clothing items.
Lightly soiled clothing should be put into one group and heavily soiled items into another. Sort them further by dividing them into kinds of fabric. Put synthetic fabrics into one pile and organics such as wool and cotton in another. Then further sort them by color type. Bright warm colors, cool colors, dark colors, and reds should each be given their own group. Do not be concerned over whether there is enough in each pile to constitute a full load. Washing them separately like this is necessary.
Before you wash any heavily soiled clothing that has been in a fire, take it outside and shake it out. The excess soot and ash need to be removed so that the water in the washing machine does not become too saturated with dirt to be of any real use. Heavily soiled clothes should be washed twice or more.
Wash as directed using your regular detergent.
Finally, hang the clothes out to dry, but not in your basement or a confined area, or throw them in the dryer with a dryer sheet. After they dry, smell them and see if the smoke odor is still there. If it is, wash them again and repeat the drying process.
There are laundry detergents on the market that claim to help remove odors such as smoke. It may be helpful to try one of these detergents.
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Tips & Tricks
Many stains are more likely to be removed entirely if soaked in cold water before it has had time to set.
If in doubt, test your color garment for colorfastness – apply warm water to an inconspicuous part (inside of the hem, for instance), then press this part with a warm iron between two pieces of white cloth.
To protect your favorite garments, try turning them inside out before washing.
Use a partitioned laundry basket to sort your laundry as you remove it.
Overloading your washing machine could mean that your clothes don’t properly get clean.
White streaks of powder left behind on your clothes due to undissolved detergent are usually caused by overloading your machine, and can be removed with an additional rinse cycle.
Washing much smaller loads on non-cotton cycles to give more freedom of movement in the drum and result in better cleaning.
Using too little detergent can cause whites to become dingy as there are insufficient ingredients to hold soils in the water so they don’t redeposit on the garments.
Overdosing in a soft-water area can lead to “oversudsing” which, in extreme cases, can mean suds come out of the machine.
Always check the fabric care label for the manufacturer’s washing recommendations.
Some dyes will bleed even in very cold water, so always sort your washing into light colors, dark colors, whites, and delicates.
To compensate for washing at lower temperatures, try using a Cotton (most agitation) or Synthetic cycle, if the garment care label allows. There are also detergents specially designed to work in cold water.
Whenever possible, dry your clothes outside on a line; you could see significant energy savings.
Make sure to close all zippers, fasteners, and hooks to prevent and reduce abrasion of fabric and consider placing delicate items into mesh laundry bags.
To pre-treat stains, apply undiluted laundry detergent directly onto stained areas. For best results, allow product to sit on stain for a few minutes, scrub product into stain, then wash.
When adding chlorine bleach, always use the bleach dispenser on your washer to ensure that it is added at the right time in the wash cycle. If your machine does not have a dispenser, add chlorine bleach at the end of the wash cycle.
Check garment care labels for recommended wash temperature.
For all HE washers, make sure to use a low-sudsing HE detergent.
Use the right amount of detergent. Follow package directions carefully. For heavily soiled and/or large loads, use more detergent.
If you do not have a detergent dispenser on your machine, add the detergent while the washer fills with water, ensure the detergent has dissolved, then add the clothes.
Keep your washing machine free of residues by running a monthly wash cycle with Tide Washing Machine Cleaner.
