I have to preface this by saying that some months my sister and I (mostly my sister) are washing upwards of 500 lbs of clothing. Our machines are going constantly and when it comes to stain removal we’re aiming to only have to treat items once. I am not suggesting that you should also break these rules or that if you follow these rules you are in the wrong. I’m also not suggesting that you should break these rules on the same item over and over. Washing clothing (especially in a machine) breaks it down. Period.
That being said if you are an avid thrifter or you also own a vintage clothing shop then maybe, just maybe you’ll also want to break these rules.
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We put silk in the washer AND dryer
We buy a lot of silk and to be honest we rarely hand wash anything these days. We will bundle all the silks into color categories and run those batches through a cold delicate wash cycle followed by a regular dryer cycle. Something to note is less is more with detergent in this case.
Nothing bad has happened… yet. Although I have had several people tell me they have ruined silk by running it through either their washer or their dryer or both but that has not been the case for us.
As I mentioned above you want to limit how often you’re washing your clothing (especially delicates/silks) to the absolute bare minimum. If you are bringing a silk blouse home from a thrift store or garage sale then yes absolutely run it through your machines but this is not something you want to be doing regularly with any silk item.
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Heat blasting wool
People will tell you that any agitation will felt your wool but I’m a firm believer that you need some moisture in order for felting to occur.
Why are we doing this? When are we doing this? Well the biggest reasons we are doing this is for pest control and disinfecting purposes. Some items are better off not being ran through a washing machine and can require extra care like hand washing or being washed all on its own in the machine. Those things both take time and are often pushed way down the line in terms of priority for us at our studio, this is where the heat blasting enters the chat.
We like to have items treated and disinfected as quickly as possible upon entering our laundry room and often times heat blasting is the fastest way to do that (although I will always recommend freezing if you’re treating an item at home). Again the wool MUST BE DRY! You will 100% felt/ruin your item if it goes in the dryer with any amount of moisture present. Felting is not reversible. You have been warned.
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Running stinky suede through the washing machine
Is not getting suede wet an old wives tale? No it is not, but the trick is to get the whole thing wet. Water drops have been knows to leave water marks on suede, we all know this to be true but there’s another thing that suede holds onto and that is scent, if someone smoked in a suede jacket once in 70s you can bet that jacket still stinks today. Let’s be honest though, some of the very best suede jackets came out of the 1970s and pretty much everyone smoked back then. So what do we as vintage buyers do when we stumble upon one of these vintage suede jacket? We buy them in spite of the smell and we try to clean them.
And guess what? With a warm delicate cycle, a little bit of vinegar and some good old fashioned tide liquid detergent (I don’t think all natural detergent would do the trick here) we have had some luck. If it was a pack a day smoker who once owned your jacket the chances of getting the smell out completely are unlikely, but not impossible, we washed one very smelly jacket twice and that worked. Again this is for a last case scenario. If you’re jacket smells so bad you cannot wear it then yes why not wash it?
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Oxi soaking for several days
The label recommends 1 - 6 hours for soaking but the true magic happens after 2 days in my opinion. Use BOILING hot water, like right out of the kettle. Leave your items in the oxi soup for 2 - 3 days without changing out the water. Stains you didn’t think would ever come out of your whites will come out this way. Disclaimer: oxi soaking can cause bleeding, you cannot soak many colors or kinds of dyes. It can also break down very old or already worn down materials. Please do your research so you don’t damage your items and then blame this article.
Dry clean only is a myth. With modern washing machines and the wide variety of products available today I think it’s very possible to wash any clothing you own on your own. People will fight me on this (and please do because I love talking about laundry) but it is a hill I will die on.