How to Care for Your Clothing Series: Wrinkled clothing!

I will do almost anything to prevent or get out of ironing or steaming clothing.  While I recognize the importance of a wrinkle free appearance, I have learned to be crafty over the years in figuring out how to achieve it with the least amount of work.

How to prevent wrinkles:

Don't over pack your closet, your dresser drawers, your suitcase or your dryer. Packing too many things tightly together is the fastest way to ensure a date with your iron every time you get dressed.  Use more drawer space for less clothing.  Load the dryer so there is room for the clothing to move around separately (half full at most).  Make sure you can easily pull items off the closet rod (versus excavating them out).  Lastly, remove clothing such as dress shirts and pants from the dryer promptly and immediately hang them up when possible.

For items that wrinkle easily (linen is a great example), hang them in your closet in a plastic bag.  The plastic helps other clothing slide by and not press into the clothing and cause wrinkles.

Hang your clothing on a hanger carefully.  Think of it as an arrangement so it drapes nicely.

Fold your clothing carefully so you use the least amount of folds.  Additionally, remember that every fold you make is going to create a wrinkle in lighter weight fabrics.  Therefore, fold your clothing carefully, along the seams as much as possible, so wrinkles are kept to a minimum.  What I mean by this is that if you fold your T-shirts in half length wise, you will have a very noticeable wrinkle right down the center of your shirt.  Instead, fold the shirt sleeves back so you are folding along the shoulder seam. 

When I hang my clothes to dry, they often look wrinkled.

To hang dry clothing, you can either drape them over a chair, or hang them on a drying rack or hanger.  However, please be careful when hanging on a hanger to determine if the shoulders are going to hang off the edge.  If so, I recommend you drape it over a chair or rack instead to prevent "shoulder bumps" where the hanger creates annoying little bumps on the shoulders of your shirt that are very noticeable when you wear it.

Lastly, when hanging clothing to dry, make sure you shake each piece out firmly before hanging; to help eliminate wrinkles.  Additionally, you will most likely need to re-shape collars, sleeves and button plackets to help facilitate a smooth appearance when dried. 

Most clothing that is air dried is not perfectly smooth (like the way it comes out of a hot dryer).  You can either touch it up with an iron or steamer, or if the material is just a little textured with no hard wrinkles, then put it on, and wear it for ten minutes.  You may be surprised to discover your body heat and gravity have effortlessly removed the wrinkly texture for you. 

For true wrinkles however, it's worth the time to run an iron over it.  Nothing looks worse than "lazy wrinkled" clothing.  No matter how expensive it is or how well it fits, if it's lazy wrinkled, you look like a slob (or hung over).

Do Wrinkle Releasers Work?

I don't recommend them.  You essentially spray this chemical agent on your clothing and then pull, tug and stretch the wrinkles out.  It only works effectively on very light wrinkles and doesn't do much of anything (except give you a workout) on true wrinkles.  Even worse, it can leave spots and stains on some fabrics and I just don't like the idea of spraying chemicals onto my clothing that I wear next to my body all day.  For all the work and time it takes to spray and stretch and pull, I think it's better to either throw the item in the dryer on wrinkle release (put a lightly damp washcloth in for a steam-iron effect) or just simply iron the darn thing.

Wrinkly Jeans: Denim does best when hung dry.  The fabric is heavy enough to work with gravity to pull all the wrinkles out; especially if you shake it a few times before hanging.  Drying jeans in the dryer usually leaves them slightly wrinkled around the waistband and lower legs.  Ironing jeans is not an easy task (the fabric is thick and doesn't iron well).  Hang your jeans to dry!  They will last longer, look better and take less maintenance.

-Lisa Bruckner, Hendricks Park

Comments

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I'm very caring of my clothing series.

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it is very nice suggestion for ironing clothing.

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I do not like wrinkled shirts! !