How to Hand Wash Your Clothing

Washing clothes is a boring subject, is it not? But it is extremely important. After all, the things you put onto your body need to be washed – frequently (well, hopefully).

Most of the time, you can throw your dirty laundry in the washing machine and the dryer, but as we get older, we tend to accrue some pieces that can’t be put into laundry loads. The fabric may be too fragile – think leather, lace, wool. We may also have a particularly expensive piece or a color combo, or some other situation that prevents us from simply tossing the article of clothing into the normal load.

The pieces that you can’t wash regularly can sometimes be dry cleaned, which is really convenient, but costs money. But sometimes dry cleaning isn’t an option – then what do you do? Whether you’re looking to save money or have a garment that can’t be dry-cleaned, you’ve got some hand washing to do.

Hand washing is pretty easy and self-descriptive, but if you don’t know how to go about it, let me help!

1. Sort. Sort the clothing you’ve got to hand wash and keep it entirely separate from pieces you don’t. You might want to keep them in a bag or hamper all to themselves.
2. Fill up your sink with water. If you’re washing darks, stick to cold water. Light colors are fine to wash in warm water.
3. Lay out some big, fluffy towels. You’ll need these for drying in a bit!
4. Get your soap. You can use virtually any soap you can think of. Hand soap, bar soap, shampoo, or regular detergent all work wonders. If you’ve got a particularly expensive piece to handle, you might want to stick to regular clothing detergent or expensive soaps. Gentle skin cleansers are also a nice idea.
5. Scrub! You don’t need a brush or anything. Just grab the article of clothing, dunk it in the water, add the soap, and rub the corners, insides, middle, etc., against each other. Make sure you scrub the insides, detailing, and particularly dirty parts of the piece of clothing.
6. Rinse. Rinse off your piece of clothing.
7. Dry. Put the piece on a towel and let it sit if you’ve got more to do. If you’re finished, wrap the piece up in the towel and give it some good, firm squeezes to wring out any excess water. Now, let sweaters dry lying down flat, but you can hang up most other pieces for drying. Place in front of a fan or direct sun to help the process along.

Good luck, and have a great week!