How To Fix These 10 Common Laundry Mistakes—And 3 That Are Beyond Repair
Towels no longer absorbent or turned a load of laundry pink? Don't worry, there's a fix for that.
Fact checked by Marcus Reeves
Who hasn't accidentally dyed an entire load of whites before? Laundry mistakes and mishaps are more common than you'd think, even when our parents told us to sort our laundry by lights and darks since we were kids. We're sharing some familiar laundry blunders and how you can hopefully fix them. Unfortunately, a couple of these errors are irreversible, so let this be your reminder to be careful lest you might ruin your favorite sweater.
Related: The Be-All-and-End-All, Definitive Guide to Doing Laundry
Towels That Are No Longer Absorbent
Are you washing your towels the right way? If not, you could end up with dull, dingy, and non-absorbant linens after a while. The most likely culprit here is excess fabric softener. It can coat terry cloth with a waxy, water-resistant film that ruins the very mission of towels. To dissolve the buildup and restore the fluff, wash the towels the next few times with 1/4 cup white vinegar added to the rinse cycle, and skip the softener in the future.
Whites Turned Pink
Fortunately, this pink dye job (or any other color for that matter) can be reversed in most cases. This error usually happens when a small colored item, like a red sock, gets stuck in your load of whites. To fix this, soak the discolored stuff in a sink filled with water and bleach (10 parts water to 1 part bleach) or OxiClean (read the label for the amount). Check every 15 minutes or so and remove when white; 90 minutes should be more than enough. Then machine wash. Still pink? Try Rit Whitener and Brightener ($7, amazon.com).
Laundry Left Sitting in the Washer or Dryer
If you forgot a load in the washer for more than a day, chances are you'll be met with a musty smell once you re-open the washer. To fix this, simply rewash the load with 1 cup of white vinegar (and no detergent) to kill the mildew odor.
On the other hand, leaving clothes in the dryer for an extended period can create extra wrinkles. Don't worry—the wrinkles haven't set in forever. To save some time, toss in a damp, clean hand towel and run the dryer again for a few minutes. The steam created should relax most of the wrinkles. If your clothes aren't completely wrinkle-free, you'll have to steam or iron them by hand.
Bleach Stains
Sorry, you're mostly out of luck with this common and unfortunate laundry mistake. Your only choice is to dye the whole garment its original shade. Or, if the stain is tiny, try spot-dyeing with an eyedropper.
Shrunken Wool
This is a bad and potentially costly error. Unless the wool has been treated (the garment label will indicate this), the fibers constrict in water. There really is no perfect remedy. If you haven't dried it yet, you could take it from the washer and slide it over a kitchen chair to stretch it back out as much as possible.
To prevent this error in the future, make sure you decode the garment label and treat all dry clean items accordingly. (No dryer!) Also, try spot-cleaning small messes on non-dry clean items with a good stain remover first.
Pilly Tops and Sweaters
If you're struggling with pilling, you have a few options here: Carefully run a cheap razor (like the kind you shave with) down the pilly section, in short, quick strokes. Alternatively, you can use a fabric shaver, which is much safer on clothes. To mitigate pilling in the future, sort your clothes by color and weight—anything heavyweight, like jeans, will abrade against your sweater, and that friction is what's contributing to the pilling. Also, wash anything prone to pilling inside out.
Machine-Dried Stain
You throw a ketchup-stained shirt in the laundry, thinking the wash cycle will take of the smudge... and then when you pull it out of the dryer, the stain is still there! Unfortunately, there's not a ton you can do here. The extreme heat from the dryer has effectively set the stain. In the future, always check the garment after you've pulled it from the washing machine, but before you toss it in the dryer. You can still address the stain at this point! Note that you'll need to check for oil stains under different lighting, because lingering grease stains on damp clothes are harder to detect.
Gray-ish Whites
This one is kind of fix-able. Try soaking your clothes in warm water and powdered oxygen bleach, following the label for dosing. If this doesn't work, you can take it to the next level, washing your load of whites on the hot cycle with a bit of bleach. (Read the package directions for the appropriate amount.) It's possible your whites won't be pristine again, especially if they're old fabrics. To prevent this, it's important to sort your laundry by color. The dingy look is often the result of bleeding dyes.
Related: 9 Ways to Whiten Laundry Without Bleach
Shredded Tissue in the Wash
Nothing is more irritating then pulling out a pile of wet laundry and finding clumps off tissue paper strewn throughout. Pull out the large pieces by hand, then give clothes a good shake before putting in the dryer. As they tumble around in the machine with the hot air, any lingering pieces will come off and float over to the lint trap. (To clean out your machine, make sure you manually rotate the drum to shake out any residual tissue bits—use a hand vacuum to suck those up if they're too small to pick by hand.)
Warped Bra Underwire
To fix this, you can try to carefully bend the underwire back with a set of clean pliers. If this doesn't work, you can actually pull out the underwires and replace them. (Amazon sells a variety of underwire options.) The only downside is you'll need make a tiny incision on each side of your bra to slide out the underwires, but you can patch the hole by stitching it back up or dotting a tiny bit of hot glue over it.
Snagged Clothes
Depending on how bad the situation is, you might not be able to fix it. Small holes can be darned but you can't undo pulled threads. Both are likely due to snagging. Things like unzipped zippers can easily get caught on lightweight pieces, so zip up zippers, button up buttons, and make sure you're not washing delicates with heavyweight items. Also, anything will velcro might latch onto something and tug at the clothing fibers—place anything with velcro in mesh bags so it doesn't rub up against anything.
Missing Socks
This is one of the biggest laundry mistakes... and mysteries. Socks go missing all the time when you're doing laundry. But the machine is not eating them! (Probably.) Check all the legs and arms of your clothes after you've pulled everything from the dryer—socks can easily get trapped in a pant leg. Also be sure to check around the machines too, as it's possible one somehow escaped as you transferred your clothes.
Feel around your washing machine's gasket too, because many things can creep their way into the folds. And finally, they can get stuck in the filter on the bottom of some front loaders or, more rarely, in the dryer exhaust vent, which can be a fire hazard! Moving forward, your best bet is to place them in a mesh bag.
Melted-On Crayons
This one is very yikes-worthy, but fixable! (And preventable—just check pockets before tossing anything in the wash!) To remove, scrape off as much wax as possible with a fork or butter knife, then apply WD-40, butter, or mayonnaise to a clean cloth and dab onto the stain—these might sound weird but they really will break up the wax! Turn the garment over and apply the product to the other side of the stain. Let the product sit for 15 minutes, then try gently scraping it again. Apply dish soap or laundry detergent to the stain, and rub it in with your fingers. Let the soap sit for 15 minutes, then throw it in the laundry with oxygen-based bleach on the hottest water setting.
Related: Front-Load Washers vs. Top-Load Washers: Is One Actually Better Than the Other?
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