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Other than washing in cold water, using Woolite, drying on LOW heat, etc., are there any other solutions to prevent clothing shrinkage? Is there a product I can buy or some remedy, etc.? I have a cheap washer & dryer that my apt complex already gave everyone in each unit, but it shrinks my clothing, depending on the fabric. I have way too many clothes to air dry everything.
Cheapness or expensiveness of the dryer doesn't have anything to do with it, it's the temperature. Set it as cold as you can.
I beg to differ. Again, I already said how I wash in cold water plus as delicate a cycle as possible and low heat. Had I washed it in my parents' good-quality, more modern W&D, it wouldn't have shrunk. Even their newer W&D is probably 10-12 yrs old now. As you know, w/ new technologies bring better ways of doing things. I believe the newer appliances have that anti-shrink technology that 90s or older didn't have.
Cheapness or expensiveness of the dryer doesn't have anything to do with it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forever Blue
I beg to differ.
Okay, "Cheapness or expensiveness of the dryer when used by a person who's paying the slightest attention and doesn't assume the dryer has a moisture-sensing system that works exactly like the one they're most familiar with it doesn't having anything to do with it."
Better?
If you overdry clothes at too high a heat, they will shrink.
If you wash and heat-dry some delicate clothes, they will shrink regardless of how careful or attentive you are.
But if you assume that a setting on a $2,000 Bosch dryer is exactly the same as a setting on a $1,900 Samsung dryer, and throw your $1,500 cashmere sweater in there assuming it will be Bosched and it ends up Sam-sung-blue... it's not the machine's fault. And if it was a high-end Bosch and an old Kenmore... you'll find the appropriate place for blame in the mirror.
...But if you assume that a setting on a $2,000 Bosch dryer is exactly the same as a setting on a $1,900 Samsung dryer, and throw your $1,500 cashmere sweater in there assuming it will be Bosched and it ends up Sam-sung-blue... it's not the machine's fault. And if it was a high-end Bosch and an old Kenmore... you'll find the appropriate place for blame in the mirror.
You're assuming I must have washed & dried in DIFFERENT ways depending on the machine. With BOTH my & my parents' W&Ds, I've washed w/ cold water setting, dried on low, even same detergent, & my apt's W&D will still shrink my stuff. I never had this problem back when I lived w/ my parents doing laundry there, so anyone would think it's the differences in appliances.
I'd pick my battles and buy a rack to air-dry the most delicate/expensive/likely-to-shrink items, then toss the sturdy towels, socks, etc. in the dryer. If I ended up with so many delicates that they wouldn't fit on the rack, then I'd do a smaller load more often. It's cheaper than buying new clothes.
YWith BOTH my & my parents' W&Ds, I've washed w/ cold water setting, dried on low, even same detergent, & my apt's W&D will still shrink my stuff. I never had this problem back when I lived w/ my parents doing laundry there
There are simply too many unknown factors here for anyone to be of much help to you, but as someone who's been doing self and household laundry for a long time, has repaired major faults on both kinds of machine and thus understands their workings very well, and has raised six kids, I can only offer the following:
Your memory of what you washed and how is probably faulty.
Your methods of washing then and now may or may not be optimal for the clothes you're trying to wash.
You may actually have truly delicate, shrinky clothes now instead of fast fashion crap from several years ago.
And — the important thought — some clothes/fabrics shrink no matter how good/bad/new/old/fancy/plain the dryer.
Until you've established that you, the clothes in question, the dryer, and the cycle used are all a benign situation for, say, your cotton mesh overshirt, hang or flat-dry it the way we've been doing since Greek togas.
To say this is not new is... hilariously absurd. There is no dryer on earth you put some fabrics and items into, no matter how expensive or how ultra-super-delicate its cycles claim to be.
TL;DR: it's not the machines. It's the operator. Seriously. No insult intended. Learn. (And don't believe marketing claims that go against a few thousand years of empirical evidence.)
I beg to differ. Again, I already said how I wash in cold water plus as delicate a cycle as possible and low heat. Had I washed it in my parents' good-quality, more modern W&D, it wouldn't have shrunk. Even their newer W&D is probably 10-12 yrs old now. As you know, w/ new technologies bring better ways of doing things. I believe the newer appliances have that anti-shrink technology that 90s or older didn't have.
"Anti-shrink technology"????
Would you care to elaborate?
Far as I know a clothes dryer still blows hot (or medium, or room temp) air through clothing while the clothes tumble round in a drum.
Are you telling me the new dryers can put your clothing into a spaceship traveling faster than the speed of light, take them back to the factory where they were made, and have the purchasing agents buy a different grade of cloth, either pre-shrunk or made from a non-shrinking fabric, then zoom forward to the present day and present you with new non-shrunken clothing? Because what makes fabric shrink or not, given identical washing and drying conditions, is the fabric itself.
All I can say is, those are some awfully complicated dryers, that can do all that.
There is no panacea. There is no magic trick to prevent shrinkage. Heat is the problem. High dryer heat is a bigger problem than high washing maching heat, but both are the problem.
There is really no fix but to wash warm or cold, and tumble dry or on low.
Sorry. Until someobody changes the laws of physics, that is it.
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