This story is a part of one5c’s guide to sustainable fashion. Read more about fast fashion and the climate, clothing storage, upcycling, and repairing.
An essential element to breaking the vicious cycle of cheap, short-lived, disposable clothing is laundering for longevity. Laundry can be responsible for up to 50% of an item’s wear.1 It causes piling, fading, and thinning. Luckily, we have sudsy down-low to help you wash and dry your duds so that they can stay fresh and wearable for longer.
Spot clean
One of the best things you can do for the planet is simply reduce your consumption–even when it comes to laundry. That means washing your clothing less often. The job of a washing machine and laundry detergent is to physically and chemically break down stains and grease, but in the process, it also works to wear down the fabric itself.2 Less stress, tumbling, and stretching in the first place helps clothing live longer. That doesn’t mean you have to be smelly and dirty, though.
To remove stains
Having a spot cleaner on hand can instantly address stains without needing to toss the whole garment in the wash. There are all sorts of varieties beyond the classic Tide To-Go stick; this plastic-free goatsmilk soap stick, for example, uses a wool scrubber to get most anything out of clothing. You can DIY something similar with a gentle soap and horse-hair brush—just make sure to stick a washcloth underneath the fabric to keep the stain from bleeding onto the opposite side. To lift particularly tricky stains, reach for a spray bottle of vinegar or Zote soap.
To axe odors
If stink is the issue rather than stains, spray clothing with vodka. Vodka itself is odorless, but the alcohol will kill off any gunky microbes. If you have a really aggressive stank, you can use isopropyl, but us this approach sparingly: It’s more concentrated than vodka, so it can be more abrasive on clothing—and it might defeat the point of treating our duds delicately. From there, you can spritz from a distance of about a foot and hang dry until the odors evaporate.
You may hear rumblings, especially among raw denim enthusiasts, of freezing denim to kill off any unwanted stinky passengers; but there is not much data to suggest this is entirely effective, since some bacteria could just thaw right back out.
Wash only when necessary
The choice as to when to wash something really comes down to a personal choice: how stinky is it, how sweaty were you, how much coffee did you spill across your blouse as you were racing out the door?
That doesn’t mean that a slew of laundry experts won’t still weigh in on how often you should toss your dirties into the machine.
PJs, bras & linens
When it comes to fibers you touch often, like bedsheets, experts say to wash once a week to get rid of the sweat and body oil and dead skin that builds up each night between the covers. By the same philosophy, you should wash bras and PJs every 4 or 5 wears.
Shirts, pants, dresses & most ‘everyday’ items
For most things that you put on over your undies or undershirts—your blouses, your sweaters, your pants, your jackets—you can get a lot more life out of them before you toss them into the hamper. Still looking for more formal guidance beyond the stink test? The laundry aficionados at Real Simple have laid out a handy timeline to follow.
Delicates & sweaters
Some pieces, like cashmere or lace, are so delicate that you may consider hand-washing when absolutely necessary. For sweaters, this may be the best route to preserve the lifespan—even if labels tell you to dry clean only. Chemicals used in dry cleaning can weaken the sweater fibers and truncate their lifespan, but washing in a basin of cold water with a gentle wool wash or baby shampoo can get you great results. To dry that sweater, lay it flat on a towel to air dry.
Don’t sweat the labels (too much)
Here’s the dirty secret on your, well, dirties: Most laundry experts say you can pretty much disregard the cryptic care labels on your clothing. “These days manufacturers slap ‘dry clean only’ on everything because consumers aren’t really taught how to take care of clothes anymore,” Sean Crowley, who owns a Brooklyn vintage store, told the Wall Street Journal.
But, the label can still give you some guidance on what your clothing is made of: is it silk or synthetic? Wool or viscose? Knowing that which can help you determine how best to treat it, though it’s hard to go wrong when you stick with washing in cold and line drying.
If you still want to decipher these icons—for instance, if you’re wondering if it’s safe to iron—you can find a wash-day Rosetta Stone online. Or, if you’re an iPhone user, the camera app can scan and translate them for you.
Pick a gentler detergent
Eventually, though, you should wash your clothes. But what detergent is best, both for the clothing and for the planet?
Soaps with simple bases like olive oil are gentlest on your clothing while still tough enough to get them clean, according to Rick Rome, CEO of the laundry service WashClub tells Real Simple. Many detergents also trade synthetics for naturally occurring enzymes, like protease or amylase, that break down proteins and sugars. Tide Purclean, Cleancult Concentrated Laundry Detergent, and AspenClean Eucalyptus Laundry Pods are some of the most effective, according to testing from the Good Housekeeping Lab.
Aside from prolonging the life of clothes, you also may want to consider your detergent’s impact when it runs down the drain. Most wastewater treatment plants don’t remove surface-active agents (aka surfactants), which are the chemicals that break the surface tension between two objects, like a spot of dirt and a cotton T-shirt. Those substances can build up and make their way from wastewater treatment plants into rivers and streams.3 Soaps labeled “SLS/SLES free” avoid the harshest surfactants, which can also irritate skin. You can also look for the EPA’s Safer Choice stamp, which denotes that a detergent is free of PFAS and phosphates.
Skip the fabric softener
Fabric softeners can also break down textiles more quickly than necessary while introducing additional synthetic chemicals to the mix. Take a second to think about what they are purporting to do: Softeners are additives that coat fabric and cause fibers to fluff up, which gives clothing the same soft, broken-in feel. The chemicals that softeners leave on fabrics hold an electric charge, which makes the threads push apart from one another.
If you really want the freshness and feel of the softener, you can add 1-2 tablespoons of white vinegar and some essential oils to your load, or directly into the fabric softener compartment in your washing machine. Vinegar can help kill bacteria and break up the stiff feeling that ‘hard-water’—with high levels of dissolved calcium and magnesium—can leave on your clothing. Both can make your clothes feel a little softer, even while keeping the threads themselves intact.
Wash in cold water
When it comes to running a load of laundry, there is plenty you can do to ensure longevity while also boosting your routine’s sustainability. Washing everything in cold water is gentlest on your clothing, keeps them from shrinking, and prevents the fabric from fading quickly. Not to mention, washing on cold demands much less energy than washing a load on hot: Running a load on hot can use twice as much energy as a load at warm, while dropping the temp all the way down to cool, you can say cut electricity usage by 30%4 (You can get deeper in the laundry-efficiency rabbit hole our guide here.)
Flip things inside-out and secure fasteners
Turning clothes inside out can prevent wear and fading and also keep zippers and buttons from tugging and snagging. On a similar note note: zip up zippers and tie drawstrings before starting the wash cycle. Washing things like bras, embroidery, and silk in a delicates bag helps buffer that excess wear and friction.
Air dry
Air drying is the best route possible for your clothing and the planet. Like tumble washing, running your clothes through a hot dry cycle breaks down fiber strength and can prematurely thin or tear clothes. Also, this is the largest energy suck in your laundry process: responsible for up to 75% of the energy involved, a Colorado State University laundry assessment found.5
Of course, it can be a lot to hang dry each individual sock, so if you do use a dryer, make sure to clean the lint trap to make sure air circulates evenly, which means you can still get crisp, dry clothes by running a shorter cycle (i.e. less banging and breakage). Dryer balls do the same thing as they bounce around the machine and introduce pockets of air.
New laundry machines may also be able to reduce the amount of dry time, by running a sensor drying cycle. This tech stops the machine when it senses the clothes are actually dry, rather than running for a pre-set amount of time until your clothes are cooked to a crisp.
How to help your clothes last beyond the laundry room
Longevity comes in many forms, not just laundering. So much of an item’s lifespan depends on how you treat it between washes.
Learn the basics of mending
Rather than ditching duds, you can focus on mending clothing when you get snags or lose a button. Reattaching slipped straps, repairing loose hems, and, of course, securing a rogue button are all great starter skills. Still a little daunted? Check out our starter guide for newbies building their stitch kits.
Store clothes with longevity in mind
Cleaning your clothes is just one part of keeping them nice for a long time: good storage is also essential. This can mean keeping clothes out of harmful direct light, making sure to clean out any junk in your pockets before storing, and taking things out of dry cleaning bags. Read more about proper clothing storage here.
Get clever about upcycling
Did your sweater get ripped in the wash, or is a stain in that cute-patterned dress ruining the whole look? Don’t fret, and instead embrace the world of upcycling. Add a patch to cover up a hole, get creative with some embellishments to cover up imperfections, and even turn scraps of fabric from a long-loved piece into something entirely new. Our guide has some simple project ideas to get your started.
- Refurbishing Raw Denim to Reduce Bacterial Populations, Mariko Wakefield, 2019 ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Impact of Powdered and Liquid Laundry Detergent Greywater on Soil Degradation, Journal of Hydrology, Apr. 2021 ↩︎
- Laundry: How Machine Washing Programs Affect Electricity Consumption, GINETEX, Sep. 2022 ↩︎
- Sustainable Laundry Practices, Colorado State University, 2025 ↩︎