Clean, Store or Toss?
Anytime is the perfect time to embrace tried-and-true tips for maintaining your wardrobe and bedding, ensuring you enjoy the season’s comforts right at home. Here are a few handpicked suggestions:
1. TOSS ‘EM: Professional organizers suggest that you go through your closet and throw out bedding, clothes, and shoes you haven’t used or worn in a year, or single socks that are missing its twin. Fashion researchers describe a “sufficient” wardrobe as seventy-four (74) garments or twenty (20) outfits —enough to cover casual, school, work, festive, and outdoor activities. In addition to making room for next season’s clothes, you may be able to make extra cash by selling trendy items online or help your community by donating articles in good condition.
2. CLEAN ‘EM: When temperatures rise, you might be anxious to make room in your closet and drawers for shorts and tank tops. Before storing last season’s bedding and garments, make sure that you clean them; doing so helps prevent odors, stains and dirt build up. On that note…
Pay attention to care labels: If the sewn tag reads, for example, “Dry Clean Only” or “Hand Wash,” know that the intention is for you to clean the item in a way that extends its useful life. Manufacturers have little to gain by recommending special care processing in a world where washable, throwaway clothes are immensely popular.
Try eco-laundry detergents: Plant-based brands can clean your clothes as well as those with chemicals, are less harmful to the environment, contain enzymes that break down dirt, grease, and grime; and clean better at lower temperatures than chemical-based brands.
Wash garments inside out: Doing so helps maintain decals, imprints; reserve buttons, and prevent piling on the outside.
Air dry whenever possible: Heat can damage fabric fibers, fade colors, and/or shrink garments; especially those with significant cotton content.
Do not overfill the equipment: The ability of a washer to thoroughly clean your laundry is compromised when the drum is filled above the mid-line. Moreover, an overfilled washer or dryer raises the possibility that your articles will be snagged by zippers, decorations, bra hooks, and buttons or cause the machine to stop mid-cycle due to a weight restriction.
3. STORE ‘EM: A closet seems like a perfectly logical space in which to store clothes, but it not only needs to be dark and cool, it, ideally, should be located somewhere other than a garage or basement where temperatures vary, and it tends to be moist. For many, reusable vacuum storage containers are a great option since they provide an air and moisture-free environment for its contents as well as unbeatable flexibility in terms of location and space requirements.
So that garments retain their shape, consider folding versus hanging your clothes. However, if you prefer to hang, consider acquiring padded hangers, thereby leaving ample space between each to reduce the potential for snags to occur.
Hope you find these tips helpful. Our consultative staff is available to help you protect the value of your clothes, year-round.
Cathy Neilley, MBA, MT, Founder- Spin Doctor® Laundromats. Anyone interested in a Spin Doctor® franchise should visit our Franchise page.
