Laundry Care: 5 Tips To Avoid Ironing
If you think that ironing is the worst of household chores or if you're not very skilled with an iron, be aware that there are alternative solutions to de-wrinkle clothes. We are going to give you 5 tips so you won't have to iron your laundry anymore.
Choose the right fabrics for clothing.
The first tip to avoid having to iron clothes is to carefully select the fabric of your garments. When purchasing, favor materials that wrinkle the least, such as acrylic, elastane, polyester, and polyamide, but also silk and lyocell (an eco-friendly fiber made from wood pulp). Try to avoid linen and cotton as much as possible because these two fabrics tend to wrinkle a lot.
2- How to Use Your Washing Machine Properly.
The second of the 5 tips to stop ironing concerns the washing of clothes.
To prevent fabrics from coming out of the washing machine all wrinkled, it's better to not overload the drum of your washing machine. The more clothes you put in, the more friction there is, and thus more wrinkles are formed during the washing cycle.
Also consider not setting the spin cycle too high. Some washing machine models offer a spin up to 1400 revolutions per minute. It's efficient, but be careful: the higher the spin speed, the more wrinkles there will be on the laundry when it comes out of the drum!
3- Properly spread out the laundry.
The way you hang laundry is also important for those who do not have a dryer at home. Another of the 5 tips to stop ironing is to properly stretch out the textile fibers after taking them out of the washing machine.
In practice, to minimize creasing as much as possible, you should:
• remove clothes from the drum promptly. Unsurprisingly, the longer they stay crumpled in the machine, the more they will wrinkle.
• shake out the laundry well before hanging it on a line or drying rack.
• put shirts and t-shirts on hangers to avoid creases and marks from the drying rack.
• place clothespins at the seams so that any marks are not visible. In fact, it is better to use padded clips rather than wooden ones, which leave a very clear mark.
4- Use the tumble dryer instead of the iron.
If you own a dryer, this appliance is your best ally for not having to iron clothes anymore. Of course, the dryer uses a lot of energy. But if you're going to run it, you might as well take advantage of it to not plug in the iron!
Simply fold the laundry while it's still warm, stretching out the fabric well, to remove wrinkles. This trick is magical because it works just as well on t-shirts and pants as it does on sheets and duvet covers.
Smooth out clothes without an iron.
If you're staying at a hotel, you might be wondering how to get wrinkles out of clothes without ironing.
Even when you don't have an iron at your disposal, there are several tricks to remove wrinkles from crumpled clothing:
• Take a hot shower and make use of the residual steam. Simply hang a shirt or dress in the bathroom and close the door until the wrinkles disappear.
• Pack a cordless steam iron in your luggage. This device, which emits steam, is easier to use than a traditional iron. Just hang the clothes on hangers and run the device over the fabric, as shown in the humorous video below.
• Use water and a hairdryer. In the absence of a steam iron, you can use the hairdryer usually provided in hotel rooms. Spray some water on the wrinkles with a spray bottle and then direct the hairdryer's heat onto the garment, keeping it about 10 cm from the fabric to avoid burning it. With the action of water and heat, your garment will magically unwrinkle.
