The Lazy Person's Guide to Caring For Clothes

Caring for your clothes is important if you want to look good and for your clothes to last as long as possible.

If you follow these easy steps, this process need not be time consuming, but there are a number of tips that can help make the process as easy as possible and keep the time and effort you need to spend to a minimum.

1. Hang your clothes up as soon as you take them off. Where possible, use a good quality hanger for suits and jackets. This will allow creases to fall out and give them the opportunity to air whereas if you leave your clothes in a pile on the floor they will become creased overnight meaning you will need to spend more time ironing them again before you can wear them.

2. For badly creased items, hang them in a bathroom whilst you have a shower. The steam should help remove the creases without you needing to press them again.

3. For clothes that are too dirty or soiled to wear again put them into your washing basket, before sorting on washday. Sorting is important as you will want to wash clothes of similar colours together. This is particularly important with white garments, which can soon become discoloured if washed with dark items, or worse still, can turn out pink if the colours from a red item run in the wash.

4. Tumble drying items can help avoid the need to iron them, but only if you get the clothes out as soon as the cycle finishes and they are slightly warm. Hang these clothes straight onto a hanger and put them away. This tip can also work with certain items that are line dried.

5. Where you need to iron clothes, a good steam iron can make the process quicker and easier, as well as giving better results.

6. If you do not have a steam iron, a bottle of water with a spray attachment can be used to lightly dampen clothes, which helps to remove the creases as you iron.

7. Alternatively, iron whilst your clothes are still slightly damp and then hang them up on a hanger to finish drying. This can both improve the finish as more creases are removed and speed up the drying process. It does however increase the time it takes to iron each garment.

8. Do not hang too many items together as if they are packed in too tightly in your wardrobe they can become creased again.

Whilst getting into good habits takes a little effort it can help you save a load of time on a regular basis and keep wash day chores to a minimum.