7 Tips For Cleaning Expensive Clothing - Washing & Drying Menswear - How To Wash Delicate Clothes
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today I'm going to be speaking with you about how to take care of your expensive clothing,
how to wash it.
I'm going to give you seven tips on how to wash, clean and dry your clothing so that
it lasts a long time.
You guys are spending a lot of money on building your interchangeable wardrobe.
I want to make sure it lasts whenever you're taking care of it, how to get rid of these
stains, things like that.
Now, this is brought to you by Kirby Allison over at the Hanger Project.
I spoke with Kirby about this article and this video I was going to be putting out,
and we agreed this was a great fit because Kirby's hangers help your jackets, they help
your trousers, they help your shirts last longer.
How do they do that?
By pretty much spreading out the stress especially on the jackets.
If you look at the jacket hangers and there are hangers made out there specifically for
your expensive jackets, specifically for your trousers.
And these hangers were made to distribute the stress that's put on particular areas
of the clothing so that you don't get dimples on your shirts or your jackets that you don't
have to go get the shoulders reshaped on the jackets.
So go check out Kirby over at the Hanger Project.
Also, he has a wide range of other things that he's got around the globe from France
to Italy.
He's collected and brought together some of the best socks, cufflinks.
What else does Kirby have over there?
I've seen him carrying knives.
He goes across the world, him and his wife Bianca, and they look for the best and they
bring it back to their curated shop.
But he started off with hangers and he's a University of Texas alum so go check him out.
Okay, guys.
So let me go ahead and give you the seven tips.
Seven ways that you can wash, dry, and take care of your clothing so that it's going to
last a long time.
The number one tip, something which somehow eludes most men is to read the label on pretty
much anything off the rack.
It comes with a washing label.
If it doesn't, then you just have to look at what type of material it is so we can talk
-- I talk about that a bit in the article.
Make sure to go check out.
I linked to that below this video.
But read the label.
Cottons are much more durable.
You're going to be able to do a lot with cottons in terms of throwing them into the washing
machine, being a little bit rougher when you scrub.
When wools, other types of maybe mohair, any type of animal hair is going to -- well, let's
just say it's made up of protein, it can be denatured by heat.
So you need to be very careful with it.
What do I mean by denatured?
Think of an egg cooking.
Once you cook an egg, you can't go back to being raw.
Think of your fabric as in a sense of being a raw egg and you don't want to cook it and
to change the shape of it permanently.
Read the label, know what you're doing.
Things like silk, yes, you're going to want to get that dry-cleaned.
Some items are going to say take it to the dry-cleaner when really they're just wanting
to cover their backside and prevent any damage from happening, not everything.
If you start to understand fabrics but a good, safe way to follow is to read the label.
Follow what it says.
If it says to wash in cold, wash in cold.
If it says to dry on a very low setting, dry on a very low setting or learn to hang it
out to dry or lay it out to dry and we'll talk about that here in a second.
So number one, read the label and follow it.
Number two, hand wash.
You don't have to hand wash everything but so many items could be saved if you didn't
run them through the washing machine.
Think of it this way, every time you run an item through a washing machine, through a
dryer, you lose one life cycle and maybe a piece of it like a dress shirt like this maybe
only has 100 times that it can go through a washing machine before you're going to have
to replace it.
Think about that.
If you only wore that dress shirt for 30 minutes, for a couple hours that evening and if it's
not dirty, then simply hang it back up.
If it has a little bit of ring around the collar, perhaps just hand wash the collar.
If maybe you've got a coffee stain on a cup, go ahead and spot-wash that coffee stain.
Let it dry and put it back in your closet.
Hand wash when you can.
It's going to double, triple the lifespan of your clothing.
Next is to treat stains immediately.
Oftentimes, we get a wine stain, we get a blood stain, little things like that and we
wait until a couple of days.
We just throw it into the laundry bin and then in a week, we look at it.
The problem there is that many stains are going to set and when they set, that means
they go into the actual fiber and sometimes you have a chemical reaction and it can actually
bond with the fiber.
What you want to do is -- and this is what we do in our family because I've got three
young children -- is we have a stain remover.
I think we use Shout and it's sitting there.
We have one up in our top bathroom.
We have one down in the laundry room.
Anytime that we notice a stain, my wife notices, she sprays immediately and we put it into
a small little wash bin if it's up in the bathroom upstairs or if it's down in the laundry
room, it goes into the wash bin as well.
We sometimes put a little bit of water to keep the moisture in here.
But by doing that, by treating the stain immediately then we help to prevent it from setting.
Number four is you also want to soak.
I started talking about that but there's nothing wrong especially for more durable cottons.
If you want to be careful on wools with this, but you can soak in water usually about a
couple of hours to maybe even 24 hours before washing it.
The water in there it's going to help pull the stain out just a bit.
Now, water without detergent and without a stain remover isn't always going to pull anything
out but stains like blood, actually cold water can help pull that out quite a bit.
So we talked about reading the label.
We talked about hand washing.
We've talked about treating stains immediately.
We've talked about soaking.
Now, number five, using a clean basin or a clean washer.
I can't tell you how many times somebody contacts me and they say, "Oh, I've got a rust stain."
Where did that rust stain come from?
It probably came from your washing machine.
Make sure that you've got a good washing machine, that you're using a clean basin.
Sometimes people take a perfectly fine or maybe it has just a few little marks on it
and they wash it in a dirty basin that has been used with chemicals.
And all of a sudden, they're going to take something that just needs to be cleaned and
actually they end up staining it because they put it into a container which wasn't clean
and ready for it.
If you don't have a clean sink, consider just going and getting one of your bigger -- I
know I've got a large pot which we can occasionally use or washing pans or washing sinks downstairs
or not always, they're really old.
Really nice wools, nice sweaters, I do not like to wash them in there so I'll go and
grab one of my large washing pans which is already pretty clean, cooking pans and -- well,
cooking pots -- and I'll go ahead and I'll wash the clothing in that or let it soak if
necessary.
Also, that applies to your washing machine.
If you start to notice less rust stains on your clothing, it's probably because your
machine is getting old and unfortunately there's not much you can do but simply replace the
machine.
To get rid of rust stains, by the way, really quick, you can apply some lemon juice on that
and put it on sunlight and that will help get rid of rust stains.
Number six, dry clothing out flat.
Hang dry.
Every time you put clothing into a dryer, where do you think all that lint comes from?
That lint is basically being pulled out of your clothing and bit by bit it is slowly
tearing apart your clothing.
So be careful of dryers.
If it doesn't have to be dried on the really high heat then don't do it.
Oftentimes, cottons are going to be the most durable.
Be very careful.
Do not put wools in there.
Wools need to be laid out and dried on a flat surface.
You do not want to hang up wools.
Whenever you do this -- so what's going to happen if you hang up the wool?
One is all the water is going to go to the bottom and it's going to pull and it's going
to stretch.
The other one is that if you're holding it up like you've got the wool sweater hung over
a string or something like that, then it's actually going to stretch at those points.
In addition, you've got it drying at different rates so you're really going to reshape the
garment.
Wool has the natural ability to form to your body and it's going to, unfortunately, form
to how you dried it if you dried it improperly.
Number seven is to be very careful when you're using machine washer to wash wiser.
What do I mean by that?
Okay.
Washing wisely, use a washing machine bag.
You can get this for just a couple of dollars.
Go to Target, go to Walmart.
These are bags in which you put in your clothing and you may be wondering, "Okay, is my clothing
going to be less clean?"
No, because the way laundry turns and works is it goes in there and it actually binds
to the dirt, to the gunk and all that stuff and then it pulls it out.
So actually putting it into a washing bag is not really going to have any effect especially
if you followed all the steps before you pre-treated the clothing.
I do this also with expensive sheets.
I use Vero Linen sheets and those sheets are a couple of hundred dollars.
I take very good care of these and what I do especially with a long sheet or a really
nice shirt, it can get caught up into the -- if you're using the old style washing machine
with an agitator, that agitator, your clothing will get caught up underneath and -- many
of you guys probably have this happened, you pull out your clothing and it's torn.
If you use a washing bag, a laundry bag, just put it all in there and, yeah, it's not going
to look like it's evenly distributed and if you've got a really off-balanced washer, you
may need to put in two and balance those properly but that right there is going to save you
from basically pulling out your clothing and finding that it's been torn apart.
So washing bag, better machine, no agitator, if you can.
Also, look to set your machine to delicate.
Use delicate first.
If you have to go, you've got something really soiled, perhaps your kid's clothing that has
dirt and grass stains, yeah, okay, then you can wash that regular.
But for most of your clothing, delicate is going to suffice.
It's also going to be less harsh on your clothing.
Those were the seven tips.
Number one, read the labels.
Number two, hand wash.
Number three, treat stains.
Number four, soak.
Number five, use a clean basin or clean washing machine.
Number six, dry flat.
Number seven, use a washing machine wisely.
Hopefully, those tips help.
Make sure you go check out Kirby over at the Hanger Project.
He's got some great information, some amazing product.
If you haven't checked it out, he's got an amazing shoe guide, and he talks about how
to clean suede leather shoes and how to take care of your shoes as well.
Don't throw your shoes into a washing machine.
It's not going to work.
Maybe if you've got running shoes, those will work.
Okay, guys.
I will see in the next video.
Take care.