Posted by Kate Owen
Monday, 19 Apr 2010
Firstly let me apologise for the lack of How To Friday blog last week. Since we didn’t have one I’ve decided a very special, surprise How To Monday blog is in order – this week, washing jeans!
To prolong the life and quality of your favourite jeans make sure you wash and dry them carefully. Jeans can fade, shrink and lose their fit if you’re not careful. And this can cost you a lot of money – especially if you invest in designer denims.
Before you bung your jeans in the washer, read this blog for top tips on how to keep your pants picture perfect after every wash...
1. Make sure your pockets are empty – there is nothing worse than putting your hand in your pocket to find a sticky old Worthers’ Original gumming up your trousers, and stray items like hair pins can cause tremendous damage to the washing machine drum. From personal experience may I also suggest checking your partner and kids’ pockets – we recently had a rather detrimental experience with a tube of super glue!!!
2. Use a cool temperature for the wash (not more than 40 degrees) - this will prevent shrinkages and stop the colour from running. Some washing machines like the Indesit washing machines have specialist jeans cycles which provide a gentle wash and take extra care to preserve the rich colours of the fabric. This cycle will wash four pairs at 40 degrees and spins at 800rpm. The programme takes just an hour and ten minutes.
3. Expect line dried jeans to take up to a day to be wearable - denim is a very thick material and the cuffs and waistband in particular can retain a lot of water.
4. If you tumble dry your jeans do so on a low heat within a small load - overloading and high temperatures will cause deep creases to form which can be difficult to iron out. It will also make your denims stiff.
5. Don’t put jeans on straight from the tumble dryer – metal buttons and flies can reach extremely high temperatures – ouch!