Top Benefits of Choosing a Professional Dry Cleaning Solution

Washing and drying clothes is daunting, though most people have washing machines these days. However, you cannot put all your clothes in a washing machine. Some clothes need to be cared for to keep their texture and flexibility. For such clothing items, you need a professional laundry service.

Finding a professional soap and suds laundry service is important if you need to clean delicate clothes. The laundry service must offer top-notch dry cleaning solutions for delicate clothing items. In the following section, find the benefits of a professional dry cleaning service.

1. Save Your Money

For dry cleaning, you need to have advanced dry cleaning equipment. All clothes do not need a dry cleaning service. Thus, investing in dry cleaning devices is a costly matter. Nevertheless, such devices may require periodic maintenance or servicing. As a result, you must incur additional costs for them.

Instead of investing in a dry cleaning device, you can find a professional dry cleaner. Choosing an experienced cleaner will save you money. You do not need to invest in costly equipment. You have to pay a nominal fee to the cleaners. Nevertheless, it helps you avoid maintenance hassles for dry cleaning equipment.

2. Save Your Time

Different fabrics need different types of care services. After dry cleaning, the fabrics pass through cold and hot presses, depending on the materials. A professional laundry service understands the fabrics well, and thus they can ensure the best cleaning service with perfection.

After cleaning the clothes, they press and fold them without causing any harm to the fabric’s texture. Performing such delicate tasks with precision is a challenging task. It would help if you had years of practice and experience to complete the cleaning and folding tasks for the different clothing materials.

A professional service provider can perform such tasks efficiently and quickly. Therefore, you can save your precious time by hiring such services.

3. Remove the Stubborn Stains

A few stain marks on the clothes look stubborn, and thus removing them efficiently is essential. Due to a lack of skills and experience, many people need help removing stubborn stains from their clothes. As a result, the clothes become unusable.

Instead of throwing away those expensive clothes, you can find a professional dry cleaning service to remove stubborn stains. Professional laundry service has the experience to understand the nature of various stains on clothing fabrics. Depending on the nature of the stains, they use chemicals and other solutions to remove them precisely.

4. No Shrinking Guaranteed

The biggest fear of washing winter clothes is that they will shrink. Most winter dresses tend to shrink after washing and pressing. Such things happen when you need to learn how to treat such winter dresses. You need a professional laundry service to deal with the shrinking issue.

A professional service provider has years of experience in dry and wet cleaning for winter dresses. Woolen materials shrink due to the improper use of detergent or cleaning solutions. Nevertheless, dry cleaning the woolen materials is also a difficult job. You should find a professional service provider to deal with such jobs.

5. Handling Large Items

Cleaning a large number of clothes is a challenging thing. You have to spend a long time cleaning them, and the job will be messy. If you want to avoid such hassles, finding a professional cleaning service is best. A good cleaning service can provide dry or wet cleaning for many clothes.

Moreover, you can get the job done according to your preferred time. The cleaning service will quickly provide seamless washing, drying, and pressing solutions for your expensive clothing materials.

6. Maintain an Excellent Hygiene

Many people suffer from skin diseases because they do not wash their clothes properly. Your clothes may look fresh, but they can still contain harmful allergens. To remove such allergens, you need professional laundry services.

Find an experienced dry cleaner that commits to top-class cleaning solutions with precision. Such services ensure that cleaning the clothing items becomes a hassle-free thing. They can efficiently remove all harmful allergens to make the clothing items skin-friendly.

7. No Wrinkles on the Clothes

Whenever you wash clothes at home, some items acquire stubborn wrinkles. Despite undergoing hot iron pressing, such items only get completely wrinkle-free. Such permanent wrinkles on the clothes can ruin them forever.

To avoid ruining expensive clothes due to wrinkles, you should find a professional, experienced laundry service. Professional cleaning services ensure your clothes have zero wrinkles. They treat fabrics gently, and thus wrinkles do not occur on such clothing items.

You can find many services, though they need to provide satisfactory cleaning solutions. For a good cleaning service, you need to find a service provider with a good name, a lot of experience, and a good track record. Moreover, you can also search for a self service laundry near me if you want a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) solution.

 

A Brief Spin Around The Science of Color

If fashion is a language, color is the communication tool. It conveys general messages with cultural significance and political or religious associations, as well as individual expressions of emotions, personality traits and states of mind. It is inspired by our surroundings and can also modify them, which is something that marketing, design and many other industries have taken advantage of. When doing laundry, keeping colors from fading or bleeding are one of the biggest challenges, and failure to prevent this can be very frustrating. While we can only scratch the surface of such a complex world, this article will tell you some secrets about the important influence of colors in our lives.

Many researchers have proven that the interpretation of color depends on learned associations as much as biological responses. Some of the meanings attributed to certain colors are arbitrary, and vary from one country to another, while others are surprisingly consistent across age groups and cultures. Such is the case of emotional tones, for example. These are clear signals that colors induce which are perceived as specific emotions. While many people think that hue is the determinant of a color’s emotional tone, studies have shown that it is actually its purity and lightness. This means that saturated and light colors are perceived as more positive than darker colors, often associated with sadness, distress or other negative emotions. So colors have both psychological and physiological effects on human beings. It is important to point out that there is a difference between color as a pigment and color as a light wave, but they are often interconnected by mental associations.

Our planet Earth receives many different vibrations from the universe, from radio to sound and light waves. Colors are the reaction of our optic nerves to specific rates of vibration. Not only our nervous system but every atom in the world responds to color rays – all matter emits vibrations and those people who understand the language of color can decipher the messages. Even the idea of a person’s aura responds to this logic – what some people perceive is the sight sensation produced in the retina by the visible light rays, an electromagnetic radiation of a wave length.

Colors with a long wavelength are perceived as warm, while cold colors derive from minor waves. People give these colors the thermal quality of certain objects by association – colors that remind you of fire or the sun are thus warm, and colors that remind you of ice or water give the feeling of freshness. But dark colors do absorb wavelengths of light and convert them into heat, which is why we generally use dark colored clothes in winter and lighter colors in summer.

At our suds coin laundromat you will find the most efficient machines that look after your colors as well as your wallet. Check out our blog to read more on how to look after your garments, so that you can keep your colors like new and be free to express your best self.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Typically, the community around a suds coin laundry establishment is quite savvy with
regards to savings. Not only do we seek the best tactics to reduce daily monetary costs, but
we are also conscious about protecting our planet. At Sudz Laundromat we care about the
environment, which is why we have highly efficient washing machines to save energy and
water, and like to educate our clients on how to make the laundry process more eco-friendly.
We do love clothes, but we are aware of their huge environmental impact. There are so many
ways in which fashion affects our planet. To begin with, it generates an estimate of 2 to 8
percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions. It also contributes to microplastics and
chemicals entering the ocean, which is not only detrimental to our natural resources but also
to our health. In fact, the industry produces around 20% of the global waste water. Concepts
like fast fashion promote overconsumption and overproduction, and its manufacturing
involves the use of dangerous substances as well as poor working conditions. Sadly, a big
chunk of these clothes end up in landfills or are incinerated without fulfilling their entire
lifecycle.
The carbon emissions during the fabrication and transportation processes are increased
when garments travel around the world several times along complex supply chains. With
clothes hopping from one factory to another at a frenetic pace, it is hard to track the real
impact on pollution and the degradation of numerous ecosystems. Then, there is the high
volume of non-renewable resources involved in making a garment. For example, over 10,000
liters of water are required to make one pair of jeans.
A significant amount of clothes in the world are fabricated with synthetic polymer polyester,
which ends up in our oceans with all the other plastic. Its production also uses large volumes
of oil. Yet even though polyester clothes have double the carbon footprint than cotton ones,
natural materials are not necessarily sustainable either. They require huge amounts of water,
dye, transport, and sometimes even pesticides to produce.
But the industry is not oblivious to this situation. A lot of innovation is going into developing
lower impact fabrics and procedures, such as biodegradable materials and dyes. But change
needs to come from every direction in order to make a difference. The microseason culture
that encourages the constant renewal of short lived wardrobes needs to disappear. Around
the world, millions of consumers purchase items that they never even wear, either because
they no longer fit or they have gone out of style, contributing to more emissions. Cheap
clothes, coming from ethically questionable sources, do not have the long lasting quality of
the crafted (and usually more expensive) garments. In the long term, the latter end up being
more beneficial to your wallet as much as to the environment. Online shopping also
encourages overconsumption, and often items are returned, increasing the emissions once
again.
Here are some of the things that you can do to do your part in helping the planet:
● Buy less, focusing on timeless high quality items.
● Buy from second hand shops, extending the lifecycle of an item of clothing.
● Choose organic materials which last longer and are easily repaired.

● Look after your clothes properly. Check out Sudz Laundromat blog for articles on
how to care for different fabrics.
● Buy from ethical companies, who supervise their procedures from their carbon
footprint to their work conditions.
● Consider selling your garments that are in good condition, or pass them on to
someone else.
● You can also donate your used (but usable) clothes. There are various nonprofits that
will happily receive them.
● Get creative and recycle your used textiles, making things like rugs, wiping cloths,
pillow stuffing, pet beds, and more.
Remember that whenever you buy clothes from a consignment or thrift store, you should
wash or dry clean them before wearing. Take your preloved garments to your closest
laundromat near me and we will leave your preloved items looking fresh as new.

The history of laundry detergent

The technological advances of our times have washed over every aspect of our daily lives. The
world of laundry is no stranger to modern innovations – from super efficient washing
machines to specialized laundry detergents for different kinds of stains and fabrics, new
products are constantly being launched in this neverending evolutive journey. And it is clear
that all product innovations within the same field need to work synergistically in order to
survive.
Think of the two we have just mentioned: as washing machines become more sophisticated,
their internal mechanisms tend to be more intricate. Standard and lye based detergents were
too harsh for these new systems, so they had to upgrade their formulations to protect the
machines from damage. Hence a more alkaline solution was developed, but then a newly
acquired global awareness regarding environmental issues brought further challenges.
Laundry detergents had to help clean clothes at different temperatures and in various
conditions of water hardness whilst reducing their impact on water pollution.
Yet in the early stages of the history of laundry, these concerns did not exist. As you can
imagine, before the modern washing machine replaced the scrub boards during the postwar
boom economy (four decades into the 20th century) the scenario for laundry detergent was
completely different. Today, the automatic washing machines are the real heroes who do all
the hard work. The detergent is only an assistant who helps break down the barriers between
water molecules to enhance the loosening of dirt, and also keeps it suspended so that it can
wash out in the drain. That is why you come to our suds coin laundromat: for our high
performing washing machines, not the detergent.
And that is precisely how it all started. In the past, washing clothes was an intense physical
job that consumed a lot of time and energy. People soon understood the need for something
to make the scrubbing easier, not only for clothes but for everything else. Ancient cultures
would use standard soap to remove dirt from their bodies, their clothes and their dishes.
There are references to soap production that date back to the year 2800 before the common
era, in Babylonian times. Ancient Egyptians would use ash and animal fat. Ash has a
sequestering effect on water hardness, which means that it can soften the water by
separating the magnesium, calcium and other naturally occurring chemicals. Ash then
breaks down the molecules in the animal fat and converts them into salts of fatty acids which
is exactly what we know as soap. Romans preferred scented oils scrubbed with the help of
mechanical accessories, while Arabs combined olive oil with laurel or thyme, and were the
first to use caustic soda. Thus they are considered the inventors of modern soap.
It is believed that it was the Gallic women who discovered the stain removing properties of
soap in Europe. In fact, the etymology of the word soap shares a linguistic derivation
between the gaulish word ‘sapo’, the germanic word ‘saipa’ and the latin word ‘sebum’, all of
which mean fat or tallow. But others say it was the Arabs who introduced their fragrant and
colorful soap produced in Aleppo into Sicily and Spain, which helped restore the popular
interest in bathing. In the 12th century, the first soap factories were built in Castile and
Venice. In the 2nd century, the Greek physician Galen had advised that the use of soap was
necessary to prevent disease, but things changed after the fall of the Roman Empire. During
the Middle Ages, there was a significant decline of hygienic conditions which led to several

waves of deadly plagues. Only the richest people were able to invest in their cleanliness, and
still some of them avoided washing as it opposed the values of the orthodox Christianity of
the time.
In the late 1800’s, a Belgian man discovered a chemical process that allowed the
manufacturing of soap in large quantities. And in the early 1900’s, a German company
introduced the world’s first laundry powder, considered the first ever self-acting laundry
detergent because it had an oxidizing agent that could break down complex molecules. Then
the scarcity caused by the two World Wars in the 20th century stimulated the search for
synthetic alternatives as fat and oil were not available. From then on, the industry of laundry
detergent continued its evolution into what we know today. Now you can fill the efficient
washing machines at Sudz Laundromat with laundry detergents that remove tough stains,
condition your clothes, add fragrances and take care of the environment.

Today’s content is going to knock your socks off!

The ancient process of washing clothes has often transcended the laundromat and expanded across our culture through literature, politics, and even language. In this article, we’ve put together a list of popular idioms that somehow relate to laundry, either etymologically or figuratively. We hope their curious origins will pull you in like a dirty shirt!

Take someone to the cleaners 

As dry cleaning establishments gained popularity in the early 20th century, this expression evolved from another idiom used a century earlier: to clean someone out, which means to take everything from them, especially their money.

Laundry list 

This term emerged from the laundromats that were running in the 1960s, where the clothing was sorted and marked on an extensive list of clothing categories. Now, it has expanded to any long list of items, generally considered tedious or complex.

Hang out to dry 

It’s very easy to connect this term with its meaning. Just picture the helplessness of a wet garment hanging in the line to dry. This phrase is believed to have appeared in the middle of the 20th century and it refers to leaving someone stranded in a hopeless or helpless situation.

Off the rack

Also known as off the peg, this phrase (often hyphenated) refers to ready-made, mass produced clothes, as opposed to tailor-made pieces. This idiom appeared in the late 19th century in Britain, and in the middle of 20th century in North America, right as mass production settled within the fashion industry and some manufacturers began to produce garments with one same fabric and pattern, designed to fit large groups of people.

Air one’s dirty linen in public

 This expression refers to the public discussion of things that should remain in someone’s private life. Today’s cringe? The idiom is often attributed to Napoleon who quoted, in one of his speeches in the early 19th century, a French proverb about how dirty laundry should be washed at home. However, there’s some earlier literature referencing said proverb, like a letter that Voltaire wrote in the 18th century declaring that the king was sending him his dirty laundry to be laundered.

The proverb comes from the privilege that the affluent sectors of society used to have for keeping the dirty linen and underwear in the privacy of the home. The idiom was later shortened to “dirty laundry” and used as a noun meaning private matters that are revealed to the public causing distress or embarrassment.

Come out in the wash

 This idiom means that problems will be resolved with no lasting harm, or that the truth will be revealed eventually. It alludes to the power of washing to remove stains and dirt, bringing clothes back to their original state as if nothing’s ever happened. The earliest use of this phrase dates back to the 17th century, as Miguel de Cervantes wrote “all will away in the bucking” in his popular satire Don Quixote. “Bucking” was the method to clean clothes and linen in the late medieval times.

Let’s do it, let’s iron our clothes – Part 2

Welcome back to the history of the clothes iron, a device named after the metal they used to be made from. Although stone irons and some made out of earthenware and terracotta were also found in Italy, France, the Netherlands and the Middle East. Today, clothes irons are small, light and rather safe appliances that heat up quickly and require little effort. But back in the day, they were heavy pieces of metal that demanded a lot of strength and patience.

The sad irons forged by blacksmiths in the late Middle Ages had metal handles that were gripped in a pad or thick rag to avoid burning hands. In the 1870s, a 19 year old woman in the United States patented a sad iron with a removable wood handle and two pointed ends aimed so that it could be used in either direction. She also gave it a hollow metal body to allow for it to be filled with a heat-retaining material. Probably, she got the idea from the box irons, used for centuries in various countries. Also called charcoal irons, their base was a container that was filled with glowing coals, and some of them had a funnel to keep smoke away from the clothes. A few years after Mrs Mary Potts’ sad iron, in 1875, a portable folding ironing table with a removable press board to iron sleeves was patented. These were all significant improvements considering the many hassles of ironing in those times.

But the greatest advancement took place in 1882, when Henry W. Seely patented the first electric iron. Until then, many inventors were searching for foolproof, self heating clothes irons. Gas irons had appeared in the 1860s in several countries, as well as some models with internal burners and attached fuel tanks (filled with oil, gasoline or paraffin). Gas irons were lighter than sad irons, but they often had leaks. It was the electricity powered smoothing irons that really reduced physical labor. They were powerful, adjustable, and cleaner, because they didn’t carry any soot or ash. On the downside, Seely’s iron didn’t have electric cords. Instead, it was hooked up to an electrical source by detachable wires. It heated very slowly and cooled quickly.

The first commercially successful electric iron was the Hotpoint iron, launched in 1905, as more homes became wired across the United States and Europe. Designed by Earl Richardson, it had an electric cord and a sole plate, which was hotter in the tip than in the center, hence the name. The 1920s saw a big jump in the evolution of irons thanks to two new additions: thermostatic controls and steam. Hot water vapor was released through small holes on the sole plate to make it easier to remove wrinkles in tough fabrics. Further developments included an aluminum alloy that prevented rusting and leaking in the sole plate, dual irons with steam and dry options, and the automatic shut off feature. A non-stick coating was introduced in 1995.

While you might not find clothes irons very impressive, back in the 1930s they were one of the most popular electrical home appliances (together with the mighty radio). Quite a journey for a much underappreciated device. In fact, there was a time when hot irons not only smoothed clothes and pleated fabrics. They were also reportedly used to kill parasites and bacteria, such as lice, which were a common and serious issue at the time. At Sudz Laundry we praise the iron for its services, and thank all the people who worked in favor of developing it into the compact and convenient appliance it is nowadays.

Let’s do it, let’s iron our clothes – Part 1

We have previously agreed upon the fact that doing laundry is nobody’s favorite chore. That’s why you love our suds coin laundry services. Then why would humanity invent ironing? Is it really necessary or are we just complicating things for no reason? You might think that ironing is a practice that responds to the aesthetic demands of modern societies. You might even skip this step during your laundry routine and erase it from your mind, never even asking yourself about its backstory. The thing is, there is an interesting story behind it, and it begins way earlier than you may think.

Just like Cole Porter sings, they do it in Spain, in Lithuania and Amsterdam. Yes, humankind has been ironing clothes since the first century before the Common Era. Techniques vary from one place to the other, but many of the methods implemented today are not that different from what early cultures did to remove wrinkles. Not to mention the old school charcoal irons still used in India as we speak, or this lady in Egypt who carries on a steam-free tradition of ironing clothes with a heavy, hot metal slab pushed back and forth with her foot.

The Chinese did it, using metal pans filled with hot water, coals or sand, and pressed over stretched clothes. These were the first hot metal irons, primitive yet still more advanced than the ones found in Viking graves centuries later. The latter were simple round linen smoothers made out of glass, that were probably rolled over animal hides stretched on a smoothing board.

The Greeks did it, with heated round bars called goffering irons, that they would roll over linen robes to create pleats. Yes, they were into fashionable clothing during the Iron Age, and the amount of fabric they wore impacted on the perception of their wealth. For that reason, the Greek would wear seamless rectangles of cloth that were pleated to give the garment more volume.

Even educated Romans did it. They had several tools that varied from devices closely related to modern irons (or other modern equipment like, for example, a wine press), and other more ancient techniques, such as beating clothes with a flat metal mallet. Yet another example of the Empire’s usual fluctuations between advanced civilization and savagery. The prelum, for example, consisted of two heavy, flat wooden boards between which the fabric was pressed straight.

The Middle Ages were not the most prolific centuries for the development of irons. In a curious coincidence, the first advance after this halt in the anti-wrinkle instrument’s evolution, is called the sad iron. Yes, it’s sad that they couldn’t think of a better design until the 1300’s, but that’s not the reason behind the name. Sad is an old word for ‘solid’, which references the large, heavy structure of these metal irons. The flat irons had a wooden handle, otherwise a cloth around the metal one, and were heated over the fire. Although let’s face it, the servants might have been a bit sad when juggling between two of these heavy artifacts, pushing one back and forth over their employer’s clothes while the other heated up over the fire. This direct exposure to fire made it necessary for a thin cloth to be placed over the garment, to prevent the soot from transferring.

The Modern Ages, hosting events like the discovery of gas and electricity, or the industrial revolution, fueled many changes in various aspects of our lives. In the next article, we will explore the progress of irons from that time onwards. In the meantime, Sudz Mound Laundry offers affordable wash and fold laundry services to take the burden off your shoulders.

In life, some things swirl in an organized cycle of cause and effect, while others just happen with no apparent explanation. Laundry doesn’t seem to be exempt from the games of chance. After all the efforts to systematize the process, washing is still full of surprises. Inexplicable tinting of garments, items coming out of the washing machine five sizes smaller… What is the source of these sorceries? If only there were some sort of key to reveal the secrets of this ancient practice. A guide to break the spell and release our clothes from the curse of misfortune…

Wait, there is something! The legend goes that a little piece of cloth hangs loose from every garment. Those who have seen it, claim that it holds the answers to all the mysteries of laundry. In this article, we will decipher the cryptic symbols that reveal the door to a flawless washing.

International laundry care symbols

Clothes, linen, towels and other items have labels with laundry care instructions. Manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that the labels are permanently attached, fastened and legible during the product’s lifespan. Following these when you visit a laundromat around me means each fabric will receive the best treatment and thus promote durability, brightness and softness. You can find some variations around the world, but there is a general consensus on the use of certain symbols for washing, drying and ironing different fibers.

These are the basic symbols recognized worldwide:

The Federal Trade Commission has determined that the instructions in the labels of products in the US must come in the following order:

1. Washing method: machine wash, hand wash or dry clean. This also advises whether wringing can harm the item or not.
2. Washing temperature: represented with dots. A single dot means cold water, and the more dots you see, the hotter the water should be.
3. Washing cycle: represented with lines. No lines means a normal wash cycle is advised, one line means permanent press and two lines represent a delicate cycle. The more lines under the washtub icon, the more careful you should be with your garment.
4. Bleaching instructions: represented with a triangle. An empty triangle means that any kind of bleach is fine, two lines recommend non-chlorine methods and an ‘X’ suggests to keep your item away from any bleach.
5. Drying method: represented with a square. Just as in the washing instructions, here you’ll see dots and lines under the square to advise drying temperature and cycle. A circle inside the square means tumble dry is ok, and unless it’s crossed with an ‘X’. No circle suggests air dry, and the lines inside explain the various air-drying methods (lay flat, hang to drip, line dry or shade only).
6. Ironing, including temperature and whether steam is suggested. The symbol looks like an iron, and the dots once again represent the temperature. The three dotted lines under the iron advise that it’s safe to steam the garment, unless it’s crossed with an ‘X’.
7. Warnings about additional factors that may damage the item. For example, a circle recommends dry cleaning, but if it’s crossed with an ‘X’ it means dry cleaning isn’t good for your item.

Now, we will share a guide (courtesy of Whirlpool) that shows some examples and combinations of what we have just explained. We strongly advise you to study this simple manual to become a laundry expert and protect your favorite fabrics. All you have to do next is come to our laundromat near Rochester Hills, MI and trust that we’ll care for your clothes as carefully as you.

 

Bad Habits in Laundry

Recurrent patterns of behavior are acquired through repetition, often unconscious and a result from a customary practice. These are habits, necessary to provide a certain predictability to our lives – a sort of rhythm that we can give in to. Something as ordinary as doing laundry has become an automatic practice that we do repeatedly and mindlessly. Acting on autopilot, we may ignore that some behaviors could be causing damage to our clothes. In this article, we propose some questions for you to identify whether your laundry habits are good or bad.

Do you sort your clothes by soil level?

Yes, you already separate colors and organize items according to their laundry requirements, such as washing in different cycles the items that need cold water and those that can handle the heat. But there is one more category worth considering, as ignoring this can be detrimental to your clothes. That is, sorting your clothes depending on how dirty they are. The thing is, if you toss heavily soiled clothes, such as gardening or exercise outfits, together with everyday clothes, the soil from the first may be transferred to the latter, giving light clothes a yellow or gray tinge and making colored garments dingy.

Do you zip up your clothes before washing?

The pleasure of shoving off your jacket and jeans when you get home and sliding into the comfort of a tracksuit is such that you probably don’t even think of zipping the outdoor outfit up. But the metal teeth are a major threat to your laundry. Closing zippers before washing will prevent these sharp teeth from ripping off other items in the load, and even avoid possible damages in the drum of the machine.

Do you button down clothes before washing?

Based on the above, you might be worried that now you need to close up every garment you remove. The good news is that you don’t need to introduce yet another extra step into your laundry process. In fact, buttoning down pants and shirts adds stress on the buttons, which can make them pop off, vanish (into the same parallel universe where socks disappear) and leave behind a tear on your clothes.

Do you hang your sweaters?

At the time of air drying, the weight of the water can assist gravity in stretching out heavy items such as woolen sweaters. If you have the space, these could be laid on a hanging rack instead, or on any clean, flat surface. Or you can use our dry cleaning services to avoid any inconveniences and ensure your items are handled with the necessary care.

Once dried, garments made out of heavy materials such as knitwear should not be hanged. Fold thick, heavy and bulkier clothes and store them on a shelf or in a drawer to avoid saggy necklines and bumpy shoulders. If you don’t have that kind of storage capacity, you can put these items in storage bags and slide them under your bed or other furniture.

Do you read the label?

That little tongue popping out of your clothes’ seams is more than just a mark to identify that your garment is the wrong side out. It actually contains valuable information that can clear out many doubts and avert avoidable damage to your clothes. Following the instructions in the label will guide you to caring for your clothes in the proper way, depending on which treatment the specific fibers in the item can withstand. In a future post we will decipher the symbols in case you thought they were ancient hieroglyphics.

Do you empty the pockets before washing?

In this article, we certainly don’t condone money laundering. But leaving bills inside the pockets of items in your washing load is the least of your problems. Tissues, tickets and other pieces of paper disintegrate in the washing machine and stick to the inside of your pockets, if not cover the entire load with white fluff. Toys, coins or other valuable things can damage the drum in your washing machine and vanish into the same twilight zone where socks and buttons go. Thus you should remember to check your pockets every time you toss your clothes into the laundry bag!

Do you check for color bleeding in new items?

The excitement of wearing a newly acquired attire may drive you to make terrible mistakes. For example, you could distractedly drop it into the washing machine with your next load, without thinking that the color might bleed with the first wash. There are some traditional home remedies to set the color of new items, such as soaking with salt or white vinegar. But these methods don’t work with fabrics that have already been commercially dyed. The best you can do is test the garment for color fasting before washing, or hand wash them the first time and the following ones, add them to a load with similarly colored garments.

Final thoughts

In this article, we have questioned your laundry habits hoping to shed light on some very common practices that we take for granted but may have negative effects. We have also offered alternatives for you to reconsider your habits. While you’re at it, it could be a good opportunity to incorporate some other good habits as well:

• Fold and put away your laundry as soon as it dries, to avoid laundry piles and wrinkles.
• Schedule a regular laundry day to make sure your dirty clothes don’t build up. You can have a day for each category: linen and towels, whites, colors, delicates, etc.
• Turn your clothes to the right side out before washing them. That way, they will be easier to clean and ready to fold, with the exception of woolen garments (to prevent pilling), and dark clothes (to prevent fading).

The Essence of Laundry

Stains and tears in your favorite garments are surely annoying. Yet there are many ways in which the damaged clothes can be restored. But if there is something that we have learnt from The Little Prince is that What’s essential is invisible to the eye. We imagine that Antoine de Saint-Exupery was not referring specifically to laundry, but the point prevails. Here, we are talking about those unpleasant odors that impregnate into your most precious items. Fashion is supposed to make you feel good, and there is nothing more uncomfortable than an unwanted scent in your coolest outfit. Others may not perceive it, but if your attire smells, you probably cannot think of anything else but where it comes from and how you can fix it. Read on to find the answers.

Sweat

This natural human secretion is supposed to cool you down, not to stress you out. But when it comes into contact with certain bacteria, it releases that unique most-hated aroma. There are ways in which you can prevent your clothes from holding on to this scent. Ideally, you will anticipate situations in which you will sweat and dress accordingly. That implies, for example, wearing breathable, moisture absorbing fabrics on very hot days or when you are about to do some exercise. You might think that absorbing moisture sounds counterintuitive, but actually those clothes that repel sweat tend to heat you up, making you produce more of that awkward secretion. Plus, they trap odors a lot more than natural fibers. This is ironic, considering that acrylic and nylon are very popular among athletic wear. We recommend that you use cotton, linen or other fabrics that are purely made from natural fibers and are not mixed with any plastic or other manufactured materials.

Smoke

You may have enjoyed a bonfire, but when you can still smell it a week later, it can damage the memory of the lovely experience. When the fumes of a fire pit become embedded in the fibers of your clothes, the smell can linger for months if left unattended. The smoke from cigarettes is a concoction of tar, oil, ash and other chemicals with sticky particles that tightly adhere to fabrics and hair. Fortunately, letting your clothes sit under some sun and fresh air as soon as possible can do miracles.

Perfume

One thing is a freshly applied fragrance over a clean body dressed in clean clothes. But another, totally different situation is when the perfume you used the day before leaves a stale trail on your garment. Perfumes have preservatives, alcohol, oils and other additives that stick to fabrics. These not only cause the permanence of concentrated smells but they can also stain or discolor your clothes, and even produce migraine headaches and allergic reactions in your skin. One way to prevent this is to apply perfume on your skin and let it sit for a while instead of spraying it on your clothing. This not only protects your clothes but also helps the perfume last longer and react with your body producing a unique, personal scent. There is also the possibility that the perfume in your clothes comes from your laundry detergent. In that case, you should start using a different product without fragrance.

Mold and mildew

A musty smell on your clothes is the result of spores and other microbial organic compounds growing on your fabrics. Some people with respiratory conditions are especially sensitive and can show symptoms like wheezing, coughing or itching when there is mold in their clothes. A poorly ventilated closet is the perfect brewing environment, so keeping your closet organized is the best preventive method, as well as washing your clothes regularly, especially when they are damp (like used towels and gym clothes).

Final words

In this article, we have pointed out the most common explanations behind those frustrating smells holding on to your clothes. We have also mentioned some preventive measures, hoping that you can avoid dealing with this uncomfortable situation. However, there are high chances that you will encounter one of these odors that love to stick to fabrics at some point. When that happens, we recommend that you follow the following steps:

1- Soak the smelling clothes overnight in one cup of vinegar to four cups of hot water, or one cup baking soda to four cups of water.

2- If the label allows, wash the garment in hot water. Keep in mind that lace, wool or silk and other delicate fabrics should always be washed in cold water.

3 – Use a natural fabric conditioner or make your own softener.

4 – Air dry items under the sun or in a well ventilated area.

5 – Make your own clothes freshener. If you have pets, ask your vet before using essential oils as some are not recommended around animals.

Please note that the use of vinegar or baking soda is effective if you are trying to remove an especially strong smell. You should restrain from using these regularly, particularly with natural fabrics, as their high pH levels can damage organic fibers, in particular those in wool, cashmere and silk.