Laundry Love

by Patric Richardson

  Hopefully you’re feeling great about these simple yet chore-shortening, energy-saving, and results-oriented changes to your laundry routine. When you’re done with the washing, turn the page: It’s time to level up the way you dry clothes.

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  The Good Kind of Dry Spell

  There is joy in clean laundry. All is forgiven in water, sun, and air.

  —RUTH MOOSE, EXCERPT FROM POEM “LAUNDRY,” POET AND NOVELIST

  For decades now, my career in fashion has made me a matchmaker of sorts. Working at fine department stores like McAlpin’s and Neiman Marcus, or my own boutique, Mona Williams, has meant introducing clients to amazing clothes they fall in love with. Depending on the client and the occasion, that may mean a dark navy jean and a colorful graphic tee topped by a camo jacket. Or it could be a jacquard sheath dress finished by a matching coat. Or, once in a while, it indicates a designer gown by, perhaps, Carolina Herrera, Badgley Mischka, or, more classically, Bill Blass or Coco Chanel. I’ve been a fan of luxury clothing, particularly vintage, since college.

  But don’t misunderstand. My personal idea of luxury isn’t designer duds. It’s not even shopping for clothes—although I do love a good shopping trip. My idea of the ultimate in luxury is sun-dried, fresh-smelling laundry taken right off the line—especially sheets, and then sleeping in those sheets. Sheer heaven.

  Unfortunately, too few of us hang our clothes outside to dry these days. In roughly just a generation—whether it’s our busy lives necessitating quicker options, the lack of outdoor space (let alone a backyard), or worry over our neighbors’ opinions of a line full of clothes—hanging out the laundry has become a fading, if not nearly obsolete, practice in the United States. And that’s a shame for lots of reasons.

  One of my fondest childhood memories of Granny Dude was keeping her company as she hung up laundry in the bright sunshine. As a boy, it was my frequent duty to hand her laundry pins, or pegs, one by one as she pinned up the wash to dry. And I loved helping her, although I’m guessing that my presence underfoot actually made the chore last a bit longer.

  Late in the afternoon, we’d return to the backyard, where she’d take down all the wash—the towels and sheets, neatly stretched along the line and crimped at each edge; the shirts and blouses, hung by their hems to avoid pin marks at the shoulders; the pants, usually pegged at their ankles for faster drying; and finally, the socks and underwear—boxers, panties, and bras. (Of course, she’d typically hang these more personal items between two rows of sheets.)

  As Granny Dude would remove the laundry, starting with the largest items first, she’d fold each piece and then let it drop into the basket. And she’d end with the smallest items, typically socks, topping off the pile. I remember her enjoying the process, maybe the meditative quality of it, and so did I.

  Yet even Granny Dude didn’t always have the luxury of time. A progressive woman, she worked as a hygienist, then as an office manager, at a dentist’s office. Her husband, my granddad, was a barge pilot, working thirty days on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and then enjoying thirty days off. Come to think of it, I don’t ever remember spending languid laundry afternoons with her when he was home. My guess is that she treasured her time with him and took shortcuts with daily chores when he wasn’t working on the barge. Perhaps in those periods she even used her dryer.

  Three Drying Guidelines

  That brings us back to the topic at hand: drying our clothes and textiles. When it comes to the actual process of drying, I follow three basic guidelines:

    I place anything woven—as in items made by weaving (with interlacing strands and filling threads)—on hangers; these include shirts, jackets, trousers, and overcoats.

    I hang all my knits—for example, sweaters—on a drying rack. (If your jeans have a bit of stretch, always hang them up to dry on pant hangers or a drying rack.)

    And I throw T-shirts, socks, underwear, sheets, and towels into the dryer.

  I’m guessing you might be resistant to line-drying your clothes, thinking that doing so will be tedious and take much longer than just tossing them into the dryer. But laying them over a drying rack or placing them on hangers takes just a couple of minutes. Plus, these drying methods are great for your clothes and kind to the environment.

  Still, you might not have time to hang up every load of your clothes. Maybe you’ve got a crazy busy day and a short amount of time to have everything washed, dried, folded, and put away. Or maybe you’ve got young kids who will outgrow their clothes long before their clothes wear out. So if need be, you can just fling your clothes into the dryer when necessary.

  But you may want to consider line-drying your clothes as a goal to shoot for—say, once every other load, or every third load. Just think of the positive impact we’d have on the planet if all of us, even twice a month, hung up our clothes to dry!

  Now let’s talk further about my drying strategies and the reasons behind them:

  First, most high-quality textiles can endure just fifty trips through the washer and dryer. That means if you machine wash and machine dry a favorite shirt once a week, you’ll have worn it out in a year. If, however, you skip the dryer and hang up this item to dry, you’ve just bought yourself at least seventy more trips through the washer—and more than another year of wear, says the National Council of Textile Organizations. So those gingham shirts I love, or your personal favorites, will last that much longer if they’re not tumbling around in a dryer every week. Plus, you’ll save a bunch of money: You’ll have used less electricity in drying and you won’t have had to replace that item prematurely.

  Second, you do NOT have to lay knits flat to dry. Consider this a reminder not to let your clothes boss you around. Before I knew better, I would cover my bedroom floor and my bed with sweaters drying atop clean towels. No more! If your wash cycle is set on fast spin, then your knits should come out of the washing machine barely damp. Just shake them out, pat out any wrinkles, and carefully drape them over your drying rack. They’ll be dry in no time. (Pro tip: Just like with your wool sweaters, unless your knits have stains, you don’t need to wash them more than once or twice a season. You can just air them out most of the time.)

  Third, there are simple ways to care for the items you do put in the dryer. As I mentioned before, I dry all my T-shirts, socks, underwear, sheets, and towels in the dryer. That said, before I hit the “on” button, I tend to do the following:

    I toss in at least three wool balls, which reduce the time spent drying my clothes by up to forty percent. (Save the tennis balls for down items.) And if I’m feeling extra fancy, I add a couple drops of essential oil to the wool balls to scent my laundry. Alongside the sunshine and fresh air, scenting my sheets with cool peppermint helps make my summer nights extra restful. Peppermint also clears the head, so that I’m not dwelling on any worries from my day. And in the winter, I use lavender for relaxation or allspice for comfort.

    If I’m drying towels, I also toss in bumpy dryer balls, which help separate laundry as it’s drying and plump up the terry cloth. Nowadays, you can even buy bumpy dryer balls that look like puffer fish, hedgehogs, and cacti—all with smiling faces.

    Finally, for one of my best-ever laundry tricks, I place a tightly rolled ball of aluminum foil in every dryer load to discharge any static from my laundry. Take a yard of aluminum foil and roll it into a ball, roughly the size of a baseball. Then just throw it into your dryer. It should last about sixty loads, getting increasingly smaller with each. Once it shrinks to the size of a golf ball, simply toss it into your recycling container and start over with a new ball of aluminum foil.

  This leads me to …

  Seven Things I Hate about Fabric Softeners and Dryer Sheets

  You’ll notice that I do not suggest using fabric softeners and dryer sheets. That’s intentional: I hate them, and you should, too. In fact, I hate them more than squirrels and mosquitoes. I hope that you will never, ever use either of these pro
ducts again for these seven reasons:

  The first time you use fabric softener on a load of clothes, you’re coating your textiles with silicone and cutting their absorbency by up to eighty percent. That means, for example, that your towels will no longer do what they were made to do—soak up water.

  You’re diminishing your clothes’ breathability, coating the spaces between the yarns. So sure, a T-shirt may feel soft having been dried with fabric softener, but the next time you wear it on a hot, sunny day, you might as well be wrapped in cellophane.

  When you use dryer sheets or fabric softeners, stains become incredibly hard to remove. Whenever someone tells me that a stain-removal method doesn’t work, my first guess as to the culprit is either dryer sheets or fabric softener, as both can create a silicone coating. Again, the silicone has coated the clothing and made the stain all the more difficult to extract from underneath it. Before you can eliminate the stain, you first have to get rid of the silicone.

  The silicone also coats your dryer’s lint catcher, which can help attract lint, which, in turn, can cause dryer fires. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, failure to clean out lint from clothes dryers accounts for thousands of house fires every year. Try this: Pull out your dryer’s lint catcher and place it under a running faucet; if it holds water, that means it’s coated in silicone and high time you clean it. Fill your sink with hot water and scrub the mesh with a bristle brush to remove the residue. Then, stop using dryer sheets or fabric softeners, and continue to remove lint from your dryer lint catcher after every wash.

  Dryer sheets often include phthalates, known endocrine disrupters that can cause health problems for children, pregnant women, and their babies in utero. I’d say that’s a very high price to pay to have your clothes smell like Ragweed Sunshine.

  Some people recommend placing fabric sheets around your home’s foundation or in your boat to keep mice away. So here’s my thought: If mice are smart enough to run away from fabric sheets, why aren’t you, too? And why would you voluntarily rub them on your clothes if they can be used as an animal repellant?

  Last but not least, if you’re vegan (or even if you’re not), you might shudder to learn that one of the main ingredients used in fabric softener and added to dryer sheets, dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride, is derived from horse, cow, and sheep fat. So if you use fabric softener on your clothes, you’re actually wearing Seattle Slew or Secretariat. Ew. And let’s just say, that animal fat doesn’t smell good. That’s why they have to add the petrochemical fragrances in as well. How good does Jungle Rain smell to you now?

  Tackling Knits with Blocking

  Need a knitted top, skirt, or pant taken in a pinch or let out a smidge? (Or maybe more than a smidge?) Then blocking is just what the tailor ordered. But there’s no need to visit a professional. With a little practice, blocking is a helpful technique you can do at home—expanding your wardrobe options and making your clothes, and you, look all the better. It’s a skill I use frequently for my customers and for myself. First I’ll share the background and then all the details.

  Long ago I learned how to block when I was working at Embry’s department store. There, we sold lots of St. John knits, and being able to block, an age-old seamstress skill, gave me an edge when serving my customers. Let’s say the waist of a sweater fit a customer perfectly, but the chest needed to be more generously sized, or the shoulders broader, or the sleeves longer. While my guest waited in the dressing room, I’d visit the store’s steam table and customize the fit. That way she could go home with the garment in hand, rather than have to return days later to pick up the tailored item.

  While blocking takes a bit of practice, here are the basic steps:

  Before washing your garment, lay it flat and then measure its width and its length. Pay particular attention to the area you want to make larger or smaller. How much—an inch, two inches? Make note of that.

  Wash as normal.

  Lay the clean and damp garment flat again and massage the section of the garment with your hands to the size you require—based on the measurement you took previously.

  To ensure the garment dries exactly to your preferred dimensions, I recommend pinning the item along its edge with straight pins every two inches. Then let it dry.

  Once your garment is completely dry, remove the pins and it’s ready to wear. This perfect fit should likely last through several washes and sometimes even longer.

  Game to Line-Dry Your Laundry?

  During the weeks when you have time to avoid the dryer all together, there’s always the option to line-dry your laundry. And did you know that hanging out the laundry can be courageous? During four years of the Revolutionary War, it is believed that Long Island resident Anna Smith Strong served as a spy for the Culper Ring, which provided news of the British military’s movements in New York City and Long Island to General Washington. This mother of nine cleverly signaled the arrival and whereabouts of another spy by hanging out a black petticoat and a varying number of handkerchiefs to dry. Who knew laundry could be so exciting? (Well, of course, I did—and now you do, too.)

  If you want to be patriotic like Strong, or if you just want to go big and go outside for the freshest-smelling clothes and sheets ever, there are some simple techniques you can follow. And if it’s freezing or raining outside, or if you don’t have outdoor space, just bring the laundry show inside. Either way, your clothes will thank you, the Earth will thank you, and I’ll thank you. (Thank you!)

  To get started, use my clothesline tips:

    To begin, place similar, just-washed items together in your laundry basket, from smallest to largest: for example, first the underwear, then the shirts, then the towels, and, lastly, the sheets.

    Once outside, hang these similar items together, now largest to smallest—especially if you have a multiline clothesline, which allows for greater airflow and faster drying. (In other words, in this example, sheets are hung first, towels go on the next line, tops are clipped to the third line, and underwear goes on the last line.)

    To hang a flat sheet, fold it in half and then clip it to the clothesline along its hems; for a fitted sheet, fold in half and clip the sheet along its middle, tucking the elasticized corners inside one another—they hang at the bottom.

    To maximize clothesline space, overlap edges of flat items—say, towels—so that a single clothespin can crimp the corners of two towels.

    Hang white clothes and sheets during the sunniest time of day for the ultimate in sunshine brightening.

    For brightly colored T-shirts and tops, plus dark jeans, consider turning garments inside out before hanging to avoid fading.

    Hang shirts and blouses upside down, clipping at each side seam.

    Hang pants by their ankles and, if you have two lines, clip one pant leg to one line and one to another for faster drying—thanks to greater airflow.

    When all of your items are dry, remove them from the line, working largest to smallest again, beginning with sheets or towels.

    To save time, consider folding each item before you drop it into the basket.

    Know that, as with any task, you’ll get faster as you get the hang of it. And really, once you do, it’s easy!

  Supplies you need:

    An outdoor clothesline or drying rack: Read reviews to find the best one for your space and needs. You can find large umbrella-shaped rotary dryers, collapsible dryers, and retractable single and multiple clotheslines.

    An indoor clothesline or drying rack: Again, check out the wide variety of indoor options available, including retractable clotheslines; wall-mounted stainless-steel racks; self-standing bamboo racks; and three-tier, rolling drying racks. No doubt there’s an option that will suit your needs.

    A pack of fifty or one hundred clothespins.

    A canvas clothespin bag that hangs on your clothesline (you can find cute handmade ones online) or another container f
or your clothespins. You can even use a fanny pack with a large pocket.

    A fun hat, your favorite sunglasses, your sunblock (even a fifteen-minute clothesline session requires protecting your skin), and your fitness tracker (you’ll be burning calories).

    Tunes to set the mood. Or skip the headphones and enjoy the outdoor sounds around you.

  Knocking Out Wrinkles with Your Dryer

  To remove wrinkles from damp silk or silky items, you can throw them into the dryer on the lowest heat setting or no-heat setting for up to three minutes—and it works. I, however, never use this method, because I’m just not that focused.

  In the past, I’d throw in a silk garment and get sidetracked, perhaps pulled in by a Hallmark Channel flick about a Calpurnian prince and a New York City girl. Suddenly ten minutes have flown by, my silk items have white streaks, and a few bad words have been said.

  If you’re more focused than I am, go ahead and toss in the silk items, but stay close by the dryer and grab those garments out after just a minute or two and then hang them up. (While you’re waiting, why not juggle a few extra wool balls?)

  Airing Out Your Clothes

  We launder our clothes far too much. Often we wash our clothes after a single wear, with not even the tiniest dot of dirt on them. Our excuse? They don’t have that just-washed feel, they’ve lost their shape, or they smell—a bit. At this point, clothes don’t need washing but instead simply an airing out and maybe a quick session with a steamer. For more on steaming, see page 66. In the meantime, let’s focus on airing out, which is so much easier than washing, drying, and hanging or folding. Plus, it saves time and is better for the planet.