How to not spend a bunch of time on laundry?

[Max727]

There seems to be a trade off when dressing well, and that’s having to take better care of your clothes, which usually means more time laundering them.

I may be in the minority on this site, but clothing and fashion are not a main interest for me. I like dressing well because it makes me feel confident and because it’s a good signal out in the real world that you care and give things some thought. That said, I wouldn’t call this a hobby for me, so I don’t want to spend more time on it than I need to. I like building a wardrobe that works, and then occasionally adding stuff to keep things fresh and interesting.

Now, with all of this comes laundry. Specifically, having to take laundry more seriously to prevent clothes from getting worn out prematurely. For me, this has meant needing to spend more time doing laundry, because I can no longer just toss stuff into the wash and then the dryer. Now I have to wash in small batches, hang dry, steam, dry again, then hang in closet.

Other than being rich and paying someone to do my laundry, how can I continue to dress well and not spend a bunch of time doing laundry or wasting money on clothes by wearing them out too fast? I’d love to just have more wears in between washes, but I also don’t like smelling bad. Plus my cologne tends to stick to shirt collars, and I like switching up my fragrances, too. Would steaming my clothes between wears actually help kill odors? Is there a set amount of time my clothes needs to be in contact with hot steam to neutralize odor?

Just looking for laundry tips and tricks relevant to my concerns above. I don’t want to waste months of my life just doing laundry.

 

[Franky In T.O.]

There seems to be a trade off when dressing well, and that’s having to take better care of your clothes, which usually means more time laundering them.

I may be in the minority on this site, but clothing and fashion are not a main interest for me. I like dressing well because it makes me feel confident and because it’s a good signal out in the real world that you care and give things some thought. That said, I wouldn’t call this a hobby for me, so I don’t want to spend more time on it than I need to. I like building a wardrobe that works, and then occasionally adding stuff to keep things fresh and interesting.

Now, with all of this comes laundry. Specifically, having to take laundry more seriously to prevent clothes from getting worn out prematurely. For me, this has meant needing to spend more time doing laundry, because I can no longer just toss stuff into the wash and then the dryer. Now I have to wash in small batches, hang dry, steam, dry again, then hang in closet.

Other than being rich and paying someone to do my laundry, how can I continue to dress well and not spend a bunch of time doing laundry or wasting money on clothes by wearing them out too fast? I’d love to just have more wears in between washes, but I also don’t like smelling bad. Plus my cologne tends to stick to shirt collars, and I like switching up my fragrances, too. Would steaming my clothes between wears actually help kill odors? Is there a set amount of time my clothes needs to be in contact with hot steam to neutralize odor?

Just looking for laundry tips and tricks relevant to my concerns above. I don’t want to waste months of my life just doing laundry.

I'm no laundry expert and can definitely empathize with you in this regard.

I like to dress well and curate a wardrobe that is both fresh and classic and, as you say, "that works". In doing so, I prefer to keep the PITA factor low. I wash, tumble-dry, and beyond that I iron or steam, if necessary. Since I am no expert, my only tip is to remove everything from the dryer and hang right away so that gravity does most of the work in eliminating wrinkles.

While I certainly appreciate the proper care that many take in drying flat or hanging to dry and everything else you mentioned, I have a busy career and lifestyle and there is no way I have the time for all of that. I also won't be hanging clothes to dry everywhere or purchasing a clothes drying rack to sit in the middle of my downtown condo. All of these extra steps just don't coincide with an "on the go" lifestyle.

What I try to do is take my time before committing to purchases, especially if the brand is new to me, to ensure confidence in size and fit. The clothes have to work for me. I can't be working for them. Time is precious so I spend the time up front, even to minimize any possibility of making returns. Right now, I'm in the process of making a purchase where due to certain shrink factor, I will size up. After washing and tumble-drying, my only concern will be not whether it fits but how it fits. This is an item that should there be success I will purchase multiples of. But limiting it to just one for now to see how it goes.

As for multiple wears between clothes and steaming out odours. Not an option, IMHO. A shirt gets worn once then goes in the wash. I'm not making compromises, in this regard, like I would for suits, sweaters, pants, and shorts. A single day of cologne and perspiration is the limit.

Sorry that I don't have many tips for you. All I can say is that you're not alone.

 

[Andy57]

As for multiple wears between clothes and steaming out odours. Not an option, IMHO. A shirt gets worn once then goes in the wash. I'm not making compromises, in this regard, like I would for suits, sweaters, pants, and shorts. A single day of cologne and perspiration is the limit.

This. A shirt gets worn once. Then it gets laundered. If you don't want to do it yourself (and I don't) then have someone else do it. Usually that requires paying someone to launder, but perhaps you'll get lucky and find someone willing to do it for free. But you ought to be aware: these things are never free.

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

Now I have to wash in small batches, hang dry, steam, dry again, then hang in closet.

Other than being rich and paying someone to do my laundry, how can I continue to dress well and not spend a bunch of time doing laundry or wasting money on clothes by wearing them out too fast?

You're probably overthinking it. Your clothes aren't as fragile as you might think, and in any case they don't have to last forever; they only have to last until your body changes shape, hopefully due to something good like you picking up a new sport or something, and not just, say, you getting fat.

In any case, try to simplify. Hobby or not, I don't think anyone here truly enjoys laundry, right? And you're not the only one doing the "on the go" lifestyle. I think most of us forumites here are good little cogs in the relentless, and relentlessly sociopathic, engine of Western capitalism, after all. But it can be done.

First, washing after a single wear is...eh....I have mixed feelings. On one hand, a shirt is sort of underwear for your torso just like your underpants are for your crotch, and you def. wash underpants after each wear, so I get that. But your upper body typically doesn't get quite as dirty, especially if it's cold and you're not sweating, so there's that. I tend to rely on the smell check: if it still smells like laundry detergent, I give it another wear. If there's a hint of BO, it should be washed.

Regardless of your wash frequency, cotton shirts and trousers are easy to clean: just separate your whites from the colors, throw them into the machine, and use a gentle cycle with cold water and as little detergent as necessary; most people use way too much, because the detergent company told them to. Totally unnecessary, esp. if you are washing after a single wear. I like to throw in a second rinse cycle for fun but that's probably not essential, especially if you are not overdoing the soap.

When that's done I do have a drying rack that I can unfold in the bathroom, but usually I just throw them on their hangers and hang them on the rail that the shower curtain goes on and leave them there overnight. My workhorse shirts are the non-iron ones from CT, and in the morning I give them a quick hit from my hand steamer. Tug on the bottom of the shirt to pull the fabric taut, and then fire away. The shirt should not be wet when you are finished btw. If it is, you're using too much steam.

Your remaining shirts and any cotton pants will need ironing. A good self-cleaning iron that can get really really hot, like a Rowenta will make your life a bit easier here. Same for a proper ironing ham along with the board itself, for getting the curved parts of a garment, like the shoulders or the seat of the pants. You can write a whole article on ironing so I won't get into it here except to say that hot is good for cotton. Use a lot of steam make the surface fresh, but if you want to put a crease in the pants, that you should iron dry, as steam will take the crease out just as quickly as you are pressing it in.

For odd trousers and woolen sweaters, well that's going to be trickier, no way around it. For this, I put the soiled garments into a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot and fill it with lukewarm water and a very small bit of Johnson's Baby Shampoo. I'm sure there are higher end products but this stuff was good enough for my mom, the ultimate arbiter of all domestic duties, plus it smells good. Put your woolens into this and gently slosh it around for several minutes. If you must, apply a touch of elbow grease to where it is obviously dirty, or to yucky spots like the crotch of any odd trousers. Then dump teh soapy water and fill the bucket will clean water. Ball your soggy soapy garments up and gently press out the soapy water with your hands. Do not wring! Put this into the clean water, rinse and repeat as necessary. You'll have to lay flat to dry, on a towel.

As you cannot effectively hand wash a tailored jacket, I leave this up to the professionals. Trousers that are part of a suit I also do not wash separately, as you want to wash suits together so that if the color changes, it at least changes evenly.

This is altogether not a lot of work. Probably the most tedious part is the ironing, but it goes faster if you do it in batches of 5 - 10 shirts at a time, and put on a podcast or something. Ironing is one of those low effort, high reward activities for me, where as long as you put in the work, you're guaranteed a good result, so that makes it kind of fun.

 

[philosophe]

Buy an excellent washing machine, an excellent iron, and an excellent clothes steamer. These really do make the chores more bearable.
Definitely wash your shirts after one wear. If you just can't bear ironing shirts, pay to have them cleaned.

 

[Blastwice]

Pants, Jackets, Shirt Jackets, and the like are worn until the "smell test" doesn't smell clean or like fresh laundry anymore.

Machine-washable Pants (excluding jeans for the moment) tend to be machine-washed and hanged dry. I use those detergent packs from the major brands and cold water, regular rinse. My clothes are treated with kid gloves for the most part so I'm not slogging through mud everyday. I hang dry everything on a foldable steel rack in my studio (yes, once a week I have to dedicate a bit of my kitchen for drying stuff).

Jeans (typically selvedge) are dry cleaned whenever I deem necessary after X number of wears.

Jackets, suits, and the like go to the dry cleaners, where they know me and know how to gently treat suits, etc. These I get cleaned every few wears, and I don't wear suits everyday, so they usually get weeks or months of downtime between wears or cleaning.

Machine-washable Shirts are again machine-washed, and while I used to tumble dry in the machine, shrinkage eventually hits the arms of all my shirts so now I hang dry all shirts on that same rack.

More delicate shirts are generally dry-cleaned, but many merino, wool, and linen shirts I buy these days can be machine washed if gently dryed, which is perfect. Merino, Linen, and sometimes blend shirting I wear up to 3 wears before washing, depending on what I was doing and if they can be worn again. If I was wearing a merino shirt in air-conditioning for 4 hours, for instance, it might get another wear or two before I launder it.

Once everything is dry, I give the shirts a steam with a proper standing garment steamer that is regularly cleaned and maintained (J-2000) and do any touch-up with an iron.

Delicate socks (mainly dress socks, non-cotton socks, delicate socks) are laundered in a delicates bag because otherwise they'll be manhandled by your pants and everything else in the spin cycle.

This sounds like a lot, but I probably spend 2 hours tops on laundry a week? 1hr 30m to for the machine wash and dry cycle, 10 minutes to sort and hang up to dry, and then maybe 20-30 minutes the next day to steam/iron/finish everything and I'm done.

Dry Cleaners I hit up 2-3 times a month (with their respective pickups) at most.