this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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[โ€“] CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes. As I understand it, fabric softener softens the fabrics. Obviously. Which makes them more prone to ripping, tearing, and just deteriorating faster. In addition to being another cost, both financial & possibly environmental, it's plain unnecessary.

I buy some really nice clothing & I want my clothes to last as long as possible. Most of my clothing takes a long time to wear out. My recipe for success for the last 10 years is precisely as follows:

I have a frontloading washing machine, which uses far less water & it doesn't have an agitator screw thing in the middle that grabs your wet clothes (clothing is weakest when it's wet). I button & zip my pants, and anything else with a zipper like a jacket, so the zippers aren't attacking clothes during the wash cycle. Nice clothing, I turn inside-out to preserve designs or outward-facing fabric. I use the ECOS greywater friendly laundry detergent from Costco, and I just use more of it like I dump a full cap or 1.5 caps per load. In case it's not as effective as conventional, just use more. Plus 1 scoop OxiClean (idk the greywater/waste impact of OxiClean; I'm convinced it's a powerful multipurpose cleaning agent that is gentle on clothing).

All clothing is treated the same, whites & brights & colors & blacks, all get washed together, I couldn't care less. Run washer on Tap Cold, Extra High Spin, Heavy Soil level every time. No matter the load. So my washer works extra hard to gently wash my clothing & then wring nearly all the water out of it. The harder you run the washer, the less work is done by the dryer, which save you electric/gas & is gentler on your clothes.

Then my athletic gear, wool socks, and denims never go into the dryer, I let those air dry. The rest is gently run through the dryer & "it is what it is", it's mostly stuff that doesn't really matter.

It takes longer to write out than to do, you can see, it's quite expedient. I don't separate. I dump a lot of simple, gentle detergents in. Wash when dirty, wring out water, dryer if necessary. I'm telling you: my clothes last a very long time. Less is more.

Sound habits, these. Except for the front-loader, and Oxiclean, it sounds like we're on the same page. Aside from these strategies, I figure that the quality of the clothes, and having kept all synthetics out of my dresser/closet have helped to lengthen the life of my clothing as well.