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OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself ânecessaryâ is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?
Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.
Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (Iâve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, thereâs a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. Iâve been going for 12-24.
What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.
Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.
You will notice I didnât suggest any further pretreatment, and thatâs because 1) you donât want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.
When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatmentâŠto deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to âwell, itâs oldâ dinginess. I was planning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. âI need to reshape itâ is nothing.
Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but weâve been trained to believe itâs all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is ânormal wear and tearâ and canât be fixed.
Itâs utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from âI keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasonsâ to âI could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectableâ! The pajama bottoms Iâm wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!
I do not know how often youâre supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention itâs way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I donât wear white, so I canât test the âit will make whites look almost-new as wellâ claim, but Iâve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.
Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.
Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.
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