Eco-Friendly Clothing Care Tips

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by GLI Editors in Clothing and Fashion, Eco Home Living

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Caring for your clothing properly is good for your clothes and the environment. Your clothes will last longer and typically less energy will be used in their care. Whether it’s hanging up the clothesline for the first time or buying eco-friendly laundry detergent, following are some tips for taking care of your clothes in an environmentally conscious way.

photo by B Rosen

Caring for your clothes properly is good for the planet

Limit dryer use to save energy, money and your clothes. Your dryer can wreak havoc on clothes fading colors and affecting the quality of the fabric.

Just add salt. Adding just a couple of teaspoons of table salt with your detergent, can make your clothes brighter. If you add a half a cup of salt it will prevent colors from running. To get out yellow stains in white clothing soak them for about an hour in a mixture of boiled water, a tablespoon of salt and a quarter cup of baking soda. Check out how stuff works for more uses for salt with your laundry.

Baking soda added to detergent, cleans, deodorizes clothes and makes them brighter.

Turn your clothing inside out in the washer and dryer. This prevents the outside from getting worn out.

Switch to cold water wash. Doing so not only saves energy but using cold water prevents colors from bleeding or fading which it tends to do with hot or warm water.

Make sure to button and zipper up your clothes. This prevents snags that could ruin your clothes after several washes.

Keep lights, darks and delicate clothing separate to keep colors bright and your clothing in good shape.

Use eco-friendly laundry soap. Detergent that is green is made up of natural materials rather than chemicals and is biodegradable. Most markets now carry these natural products. A few popular ones are made by Method, Mrs. Meyers and Seventh Generation.

When Drying Clothes on a Clothesline is Against the Rules

Posted on Sep 28, 2009

Tags:

cleaning clothes naturally, drying on a clothesline, eco friendly detergent, eco friendly laundry

About the Author

GLI Editors

Green Living Ideas provides ideas, tips, and information to help you improve the environmental sustainability of every aspect of your life: home energy, green building and remodeling, cars, food, waste recycling—and everything in between. GLI's editorial voice is driven by founder Sean Daily and Editor-In-Chief Adam Shake, and written by an amazing staff of author and interns.

3 Responses to “Eco-Friendly Clothing Care Tips”

Trigeia Twins\

Sep 28, 2009

Great tips, Its funny cause we were just talking about the use of more environmentally friendly detergents and of course we have issues with keeping the color in our clothes.
Rose

Sep 28, 2009

Good tips! Some other things I also do: use vinegar (a natural fabric softener) on your rinse cycle, and tennis balls in the dryer fluff your clothes and help them to dry faster.

I have also written about how I wash cloth diapers on my blog.