How can we take care of clothing and save money at the same time?

Here you can find some ideas for doing laundry in a correct way that will also make you spend fewer resources.

1. Remove stains from garments before washing them. You will prevent stains from penetrating the fabric while inside the washing machine, and will need to wash them again which can cost precious time. Because stains are caused by many different reasons, I am skeptical of universal stain removers as very doubtful products; the removal process must be in accord with the type of stain.

2. You can also save money if you know how to hand-wash delicate fabrics, such as wool and silk. If you do it incorrectly, wool could lose its shape while silk may fray and break easily due to the strong mechanical action of washing machines.

3. Use the right amount of soap: no more, no less. The same applies to fabric softener, too much of it can make clothes look grayish. The risk of using less of these products is that clothes might not be well cleaned, but using an excessive amount has other disadvantages, sometimes clothes can also get a yellowish tone. To keep white clothes always white you can use a whitener detergent, and to prevent colors from fading, use one without whitener or bleach in it.

4. Chose the proper washing cycle and temperature for each kind of garments. As I already mentioned in other posts, almost everything can be washed between 30-40º Celsius / 86-104º Fahrenheit. Raising the temperature does not necessarily result in cleaner clothes.

5. In a similar way, we can say that bleach is not the solution for everything, but we should use it sparingly and only in specific cases (white clothes in which stains are impossible to remove through other procedures). It is well known that bleach weakens fibers and an excess of it turns clothes yellowish.

6. Depending on the fabric, line dry some clothes and put others in the dryer. For example, elastane or spandex should not be put in the dryer. Clothes can be easily damaged using an inappropriate drying cycle and today there are many fabrics that can be kept in better conditions by using shorter drying cycles, or eliminating machine drying.

7. Same goes with ironing. It is better not to iron garments when labels indicate so. Such is the case of polyamide or nylon. You can eliminate the need for ironing certain fabrics if you pay attention to the drying process (for example, polyester cotton blend tablecloths) which will indeed save valuable time. 

8. If a label recommends dry cleaning, but you know well the fibers and fabrics of the garment and you are sure that its composition does not include anything that can be damaged by water, you can hand-wash it at home, taking special care of soap, drying and ironing. You will save a lot on dry cleaner.

9. Before storing clothes in your wardrobe, give them a partial cleaning. For example, you can clean the ones that require dry cleaning using a brush with water and ammonia as explained here.