10 Ways to Get More Wear Out of Your Clothing

We know that clothes do not make a per­son; but it does help. And it’s always great to know how to take care of clothes so they last longer. Hav­ing said that, let us remem­ber what Albert Ein­stein once said, “If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy fur­ni­ture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philoso­phies.… It would be a sad sit­u­a­tion if the wrap­per were bet­ter than the meat wrapped inside it.”

This post is from the Green Cheap­skate by Jeff Yeager:

With the aver­age Amer­i­can fam­ily of four spend­ing almost $4,000 (or Php160,000!) per year on cloth­ing, think of the money you can save by extend­ing the life of your clothes and hang­ing onto them longer. Here are some prac­ti­cal ways to do just that:

1. Laun­der Less Often, and Only in Cold Water

Many of us are guilty of over laun­der­ing our clothes, which costs time and money and is usu­ally unnec­es­sary. Wash­ing and dry­ing is often actu­ally harder on cloth­ing fab­ric than wear­ing it! Con­sider wear­ing apparel items more than once between laun­der­ing, and wash most cloth­ing in cold water only; cold water costs less, is gen­tler on fab­rics, and will get most clothes just as clean.

2. Hold the Bleach

Bleach can cause cloth­ing to dis­in­te­grate more quickly. If you need to brighten white clothes, try using bak­ing soda and hot water instead.

3. It Pays to Get Hung Out to Dry

Elec­tric– and gas-powered clothes dry­ers not only cost a pretty penny to own and oper­ate, but they cook and beat the life out of your cloth­ing too. Dry­ing your clothes on a good old-fashioned clothes­line can increase the lifes­pan of some gar­ments by as much as fifty percent…plus your clothes will smell terrific.

4. Zip Up Before You Wash

Metal zip­pers on jeans, jack­ets and other apparel items are like tiny chain­saws in the washer and dryer, rip­ping away at other clothes the whole time unless you zip them up first.

5. Don’t Let Small Prob­lems Become Big Ones

Most rips and tears start out small, so check your clothes care­fully after every wash­ing to catch and mend snags while they’re still small and easy to fix.

6. Soggy Shoes

The lifes­pan of footwear is often cut short by the effects of mois­ture, even more so than by pound­ing the pave­ment. To make your shoes last longer, don’t wear the same pair every day. Give each pair at least a day in between to dry out from the mois­ture they absorb from your body and the envi­ron­ment. In humid or rainy weather, crum­ple up a cou­ple of pieces of news­pa­per and stuff them in your shoes before you go to bed at night; by morn­ing, the paper will have wicked-up the excess mois­ture. Fre­quently shin­ing or seal­ing shoe leather helps pro­tect it from mois­ture as well.

7. Don’t Throw It Away, Remodel It Instead

Even if you’re chal­lenged when it comes to nee­dle and thread, there are a lot of sim­ple, fun things you can do to cus­tomize and update clothes that you’re bored with or that are out of fash­ion. Check out the book (from the library, silly) Sew Sub­ver­sive (Taunton 2006) for some easy and cre­ative clothes remod­el­ing ideas.

8. Think “Vin­tage” Not “Used”

We’re get­ting rid of a lot of our threads before they’re thread­bare. Only a small per­cent­age of the cloth­ing we throw away in the U.S. is truly “worn out.” For­tu­nately, some of those duds make an encore appear­ance at thrift stores, yard sales and resale/consignment shops, where you’ll usu­ally pay only ten or twenty cents on the dol­lar com­pared to new/retail. Also, form a clothes swap­ping club with friends and fam­ily mem­bers who wear sim­i­lar sizes, so that when you get tired of a gar­ment you can pass it along to some­one who will wear it.

9. Stor­age and Orga­ni­za­tion Are Key

“I for­got I even had that in my closet!” How many times have we all said that? Store off-season clothes in plas­tic totes and add a cou­ple cedar blocks for extra pro­tec­tion. Keep a writ­ten inven­tory of your clothes, and make a “pro­gres­sive shop­ping list” of new things you’ll need to buy in the near future; that way you can pick them up the next time you see them on sale.

10. Buy Clas­sics, Not Fads

Build a wardrobe around just a few col­ors that look good on you and that com­bine well with one another, giv­ing you diver­sity with­out need­ing to buy so many clothes. Look for clas­sic styles, well made gar­ments, and durable fab­rics, and don’t get suck­ered into trendy fash­ions and col­ors that will become out­dated before you even get out of the store. When it comes to pay­ing top dol­lar for the lat­est designer fash­ions, remem­ber what bil­lion­aire War­ren Buf­fet once said: “I buy expen­sive suits. They just look cheap on me.”