How To Care For Your Clothes, Part 2: Handwashing

Handwashing is more gentle than machine washing, and can actually improve the texture of certain fabrics when compared with machine washing or dry cleaning. It's also pretty easy and quite cheap, especially compared with the cost of dry cleaning.

Step 1: Identify clothes to be handwashed. Your first step is to look at the care instructions on the label. The general rule of thumb is if it says "Dry Clean," you can safely hand wash the item. If it says "Dry Clean Only," don't hand wash. I prefer to hand wash items labeled "Machine Wash Gentle" too. No label? Lingere and tights can almost always be handwashed, as can natural fibers like wool and alpaca. Gather your hand washables together in one place so you don't accidentally mix in any dry clean onlies.

Step 2: Gather your gear. You will need a gentle detergent like Woolite, a clean sink, a clean plastic tub (I use a shallow underbed storage unit from Target), several clean bath towels, and a flat surface relatively free of dirt or cat hair (I use the guest bed, stripped of sheets). If your hands are small, you might also want to use a clean kitchen colander for wringing out and carrying knits without stretching them. I also use a clothes drying rack.

Cover the flat surface with a layer of towels. This is the surface you'll use to block and dry your clothes after they are clean. At this point, take a quick look at your flat surface and estimate how many tops you can lay flat on it. This is usually the biggest bottleneck of the whole operation. Don't wash more clothes at one time than you have room to lay flat. My guest bed can accommodate between fve and six sweaters, so that's the maximum number of sweaters I wash at any one time.

Step 3: Sort your clothes. The dyes in fabrics can bleed like crazy, so you'll want to wash your clothes item by item, moving from the lightest colored fabrics to the darkest colored ones or else you can stain your clothes. If your flat surface can accommodate three articles of clothing, and you have three items to wash, you are in luck. Sort them from lightest to darkest. If you need to wash more things than your drying surface can accommodate, you'll have to do this in shifts. Never fear, it's actually kind of a zen way to spend your time.

Step 4: Prepare the water. Fill the large plastic tub 2/3 full with hot water. Ideally it should be at 82 degrees, which means it feels hot but comfortable to the touch. Add a tablespoon or so of detergent and swirl to mix.

Step 5: Wash your first, lightest colored item. I like to throw in the first item, turn it end over end a couple times to make sure it is saturated with soapy water, and then to let it soak for a couple of minutes to relax the fibers and loosen any dirt or stains. Then knead the item for three to five minutes. I am not especially precise about the time, I usually listen to music while I do this, so I'll knead for about the length of a song. The kneading motion is important. Pretend you are kneading bread dough. You can also gently squeeze the fabric to move water through it. Do not ever rub the fabric against itself or against the tub. This can cause natural fibers to felt together, almost as though they've shrunk in certain spots.

Step 6: Rinse.Squeeze out the soapy water as best you can. Don't wring it hard, you don't want to stretch the fabric or tear the fibers--keep in mind that natural fibers are at their weakest when they are wet, so you don't want to be too hard on them. I then transfer the item to a sink, put the stopper in the sink, and run the tap for three seconds or so until the item is just barely submerged. Then I knead just like I did before, but drain and refill the sink every few kneads to make sure I'm getting all the soap and dye out.

Step 7: Block. When the rinse water runs more or less clear (and depending on the fabric you're working with, this can happen on the first rinse or on the tenth), drain the sink one last time and sqeeze out as much water as you can. You'll want to carry the item to your flat blocking surface in one lump, not letting anything hang over and stretch out. If your hands are small, this is where the colander comes in. Some would say this is overkill, but as a knitter of lace, I err on the side of caution--you could not pay me to carelessly stretch out knitwear. Dump your item onto the blocking surface and carefully block it flat. Blocking is just a fancy word for "lay the fabric into the shape it's supposed to dry in." Blocking is a great opportunity to reshape a sweater that has stretched out. I usually start with the shoulder seams and then block down the torso, being careful to maintain any haping at the waist and also to get the edges straight on both the top and bottom layer of fabric. Then I block the arms straight out in a T position, and then fold them in diagonally to save space on my blocking surface.

When I am washing multiple items, I like to soak the next item while I'm blocking the first one.

Repeat until you have run out of flat blocking surface. If your fabrics have bled dye into the wash water, you may need to change the water. I don't usually bother if I'm washing black fabrics next, but otherwise I don't want to run the risk of discoloring the stuff I'm trying to get clean. I let these dry overnight or a little longer until they are mostly dry, and then drape them over the drying rack to finish drying. If I still have handwashing to do, I toss the damp towels in the dryer for a couple of minutes while I prepare the next batch of washing water and then wash the next five or six times. Unless an item is very dirty, I wash my sweaters seasonally, so I handwash only rarely but deal with large volumes of clothes when I do.

As a side note, lingere and tights don't need to be blocked nearly so carefully. I usually just sling them over the shower curtain rod or a doorknob after I've rinsed and wrung them out. It lends the bathroom a lovely debauched look.