When you fall in love with a piece of clothing, whether it’s your new jeans or an elegant blouse, you want them to last for as long as possible. Unfortunately, when it comes to fashion, nothing lasts forever. Clothes are made to be worn, and as such, they can develop signs of wear and tear. It’s part of their life cycle.

However, more often than not, the items you love don’t even make it to “old age”, so to say. Your fall haul shopping may not last longer than a couple of months if you can’t prevent damage. If you’ve been choosing new clothes to keep you warm in fall and winter, here is a brief reminder of how to avoid those rookie fashion care mistakes.

Read the label:

It might sound silly, but you’d be surprised to know that most people are quick to snap the label off without reading it. It makes sense: Labels can be itchy and unpleasant against the skin. Yet they contain valuable information. If you’re going to cut it, make sure to store it safely for future reference. Your label will display different symbols related to wash, bleaching, tumble dry, ironing, dry cleaning, and additional instructions. A hot wash and tumble dry are the most common places where damages can occur! If you’ve removed the label without reading it, your best bet is to apply the following principles:

• Warm wash for cotton and similar fabric
• Hand wash for silk, satin, underwear, lace, mesh, and wool fabric
• Avoid tumble dryer for wool, non-stretchy clothes, and fragile clothes such as underwear, tights, or mesh skirts

Check your water:

Do you find white marks on your clothes after washing them? It could be limescale. Hard water can damage the fabric and leave white stains that are difficult to remove. Ideally, you want to consider hard water removal solutions such as a water softener. You can test your water to figure out if it is relevant to you. However, the easiest way is to check for limescale in the kettle, around the taps, and on the shower curtains.

Sort your colors and fabrics:

Granted, nowadays, you can throw all your clothes in the wash at the same time and add a color catcher sheet to avoid color bleeds. Do these sheets work? Yes, more often than not, they can be highly effective. But it takes only one lousy sheet to ruin your laundry, so it’s best to learn to sort out your clothes. Ideally, you want to end up with distinctive piles: whites, darks, lights, denim, delicates. Color sorting is only one step! Make sure to consider fabric weight – hence denim VS delicates for instance – heavily stained garments.

Keep your washing machine clean:

A dirty washing machine will damage your clothes. Simple steps such as removing debris after a wash like pet hair and small particles and not leaving wet clothes inside the machine for too long can avoid unpleasant odors. You can also run a cleaning cycle as most washers have one nowadays.

If you’ve had your love affair with a piece of garment cut short because of unexpected damage, now’s the time to stop the story from repeating itself! Keeping your clothes for longer means becoming more strategic and organized with your laundry routine.

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