If there's one good reason to do the sniff test, it's this:
washing and drying your clothing after each wear is one of the quickest ways to
wear those outfits out. Yes, there are ways to improve your laundry skills, but
you're still shoving your favorite duds into a machine to get agitated-yes, that's
what it's called-and then into a different machine to get blasted with heat.
You do know what all that lint you pull out of the dryer
actually is, right? Bits of fabric fibers from your clothes. Even if your
shirts didn't shrink in the wash, they still literally got smaller.
But I get it. You want to wash that outfit not necessarily
because it is dirty, but because it looks dirty. Or, more accurately, like you
spent a whole day wearing it. Big ol' creases at the elbows and the hip joints,
with a nice wrinkle across the front from all those hours sitting at a desk.
And yeah, you don't want to wear that again without
addressing those issues. But washing isn't always the answer. Now that the
weather is cooling down again, it's time to return to one of my favorite
fashion-preserving habits: ironing clothes instead of washing them.
Yes, you can do some serious damage to your clothing with an
iron. However, as long as you keep your iron at the appropriate temperature for
the fabric and don't, like, leave the iron resting against your clothing as you
go check Twitter, your clothes should leave the ironing board wrinkle-free,
refreshed, and ready to wear.
Which is the same result you're trying to achieve with the
washer/dryer, only without the agitation-or the "high efficiency spin
cycle," if you've got a newer machine-and the lint. There's a reason
there's no such thing as "iron lint," after all.
(I'd make a joke about ironing being your own personal
"dry cleaning," but you do use the steam and spray functions on your
iron, right?)
So before you toss that shirt into the hamper, check to see
if it's really dirty. Did you spill coffee on it? Was it a particularly sweaty
day? DOES IT SMELL? Give it a wash.
But if your clothing just looks rumpled or wrinkled, give it
an iron instead. Those fabric fibers will get to cling to life for a little bit
longer, and you'll get clothes that look like they've never been worn.
