Thank you. I have never found Woolite to be gentle either. I'm sorry but what is a detergent w/o dot. can you suggest specific? It would be a lie if I said I will iron them shirts. More true to say I will take them to cleaners and insist on DC not washing.

I hear you about the ironing! I only suggested trying one to see if that was the difference. After a few washings all the sizing has washed out and the shirt gets a bit limp. Perhaps you only need the cleaners to do a good ironing job with some sizing. :) The blower machine, however, is pretty inexpensive, while hand ironing probably costs more than $5 per shirt. Shirt rate for dress shirts should be under $2, which could be worth it if it'll make the polos look good enough.

"Dots" are the optical brighteners and other weird chemicals that a lot of national brand detergents have. I use Seventh Generation liquid, and it's a yellowish clear liquid, and pretty thin even in the 4x HE version. There are lots of others that are clear liquid. The "dots" kind have texture or dots, or are opaque or chalky, and those, while they probably clean well, can be abrasive.

Do you have hard water? We have extremely hard water and it tends to make our clothes faded as well.

We use Purex free and clear as I have sensitive skin and harsh soaps irritate me. It has no dots, not even sure what the "dots" are referring to.

Edit: NM, plllog just explained what dots are.

not too hard plus I have a softener that works well. very helpful info. thanks all

@pillog, I've seen the 7th Gen at Kroger. I'' get some and see. Sometimes cleaners don't do a good job of getting rid of neck grime. DH works in office environment but neck grime is there just as if he were digging ditches. I typically alternate between 1 wash and 2-3 DC but it is pricey, even at $2 shirt. plus, it could be cheap fabric also.

I would dry clean a few and see how they look. Some cleaners are just better than others. Find a really good one.

If he needs to where these shirts often, I would wash them on hand wash cycle, in cold water and hang dry.

I know I dry clean things that I can easily wash. But, I do find they last longer, look crisper and nicer. As things age, they get bumped down to getting washed.

If I wear something only a few hours, I will try to air it out. I feel eight hours wear in the summer is long enough. So, if I might get three wearings before washing. If your DH has to wear them all day long, then one wearing.

Ah. Neck grime. That's something dots might be good for. :) Remember Wisk for ring around the collar? We used to use it for cleaning paintbrushes. :) 7th Gen. probably won't work on neck grime without pre-treating. Part of the function of dots is stain removal, which is also one of the reasons they can fade fabrics.

We used to do casual office shirts (broadcloth, but patterned) at home, but figured out that the cleaners (good ones as ellendi said) cost less and would do them on hangers (which get returned for reuse) for the same price as folded (which makes creases).

Dawn Blue dishwashing soap is good for cleaning shirt collars, at least woven cotton. I've never tried it on knits.

I have to wash squeezy socks by hand, nightly and often wash socks, undies or a shirt just after.

I find that a few drops of dishwashing soap dropped along the collar after a few squeezes, then collar rubbed rubbed back and forth between hands tends to get the grime out, or sometimes rub with a bar of laundry soap.

ole joyful

Machine drying fades colors. Cottons lose colors faster than synthetic fibers. Stay with lighter colors to begin with and wash in the mildest soap. Rinse out until no more soap is visible in the rinse water and hang to dry inside out so the sun won't fade the color. I hang mine with the back side facing the sun. You can press when the item is almost dry to give the surface a more finished look or just send them out for pressing. Sometimes, all it needs is a steaming.

Yes it is. I don't buy anything that has to be dry cleaned. I did buy a couple of jackets at a consignment shop. My friend advised me to launder them on delicate and hang to dry. Worked for me. Also the chems they use are toxic, you are suppose to hang them outside for a few hours before you wear them.

LLBean has great customer service, maybe ask them? Their return policy is anything, anytime, for any reason.

I use TIDE Smart Dry plastic hangers (I found mine at Target) for line-drying hubby's heavy cotton and knit shirts. They have a much broader hanging base to support the shoulders of the garment, plus it's vented to allow air circulation - so no wet spots at the shoulders. It also keeps the front and back fabrics separated enough for air-flow to aid faster drying.

Two things I found are necessary to get a nice looking shirt so you don't have to iron or resort to dry-cleaning.

(1.) Make sure the spin cycle is on one of the lowest spin speeds. The high-speed spin is great for drying clothes in a dryer, but for line drying you need your garments wetter, and the fast spin tends to set wrinkles. My machine has a speed designed for line-drying so it doesn't set wrinkles during the spin cycle.

(2.) Toss the items in the dryer for about 3-4 minutes to warm them slightly and help reduce the wrinkles a little more, then place them on Tide Hangers and hand-press (or smooth out) the shirt. When line-drying clothes, slightly wetter clothes aid in allowing gravity to gently pull wrinkles out of fabrics.

Before I found the Tide Smart Dry hangers, I would place some old shoulder pads (remember the 80's? ;-) between the wood hanger and the shoulders to prevent "bunny ears" - those points at the shoulder that result from the hangers.

We line-dry all our clothing in a semi-finished room in the basement. We have 6-lines, enough for 2 loads of laundry, plus a 6-foot clothes rod along one wall where things that normally hang on hangers are placed on hangers on the rod to dry. We have a ceiling fan over the lines to aid drying, and place an oscillating floor fan to help dry the clothes on hangers.

Since using the inside clothes line (I used the outdoor line and the dryer when necessary), our clothes last seemingly "forever". No more faded colors, wind-whipped fabrics, sun-destroyed elastic, allergens clinging to fabric, surprise insects in a sleeve or pants leg, and bird "bombs" to contend with.... To prevent sun fading, you can also place a line in your garage. We have two bays with 2 garage doors, and I placed 2 lines between the bays to hang laundry until we got our landscaping done when we first built our home and I could get the laundry courtyard finished. I also added hubby's industrial-grade, high-powered fan he used in the garage, and things dried in no time.

For rings on collars/cuffs, use a mild (clear, not colored) shampoo, which is designed to remove body oil from hair, so it works well on fabrics for the same reason.

-Grainlady

Wow, Grainlady, you are a laundry expert! My mom never used a drier and had an outdoor line, a line in the basement and one in the garage just beyond the parked car. Alas, we have no basement nor unused rooms, our garage does not have the extra space of my mother's, and I've had to re-wash sheets too often (birds) to attempt to line-dry anymore. Those hangers sound interesting!

Well, boo. Apparently the company who owned the license/patent has gone out of business so Tide isn't selling them anymore. They sounded great.

Knew someone who worked in a cleaners. If they were told about spots/problem areas they would pre-treat those areas to remove the stains.

sjerin -

Oh, no! But, thanks for the update on the TIDE hangers. When I checked Amazon I noticed they were unavailable. I've got eight of them (more than enough for our needs). I gave 4 to my neighbor one Christmas because she thought they were wonderful, and 4 to my daughter who loves them, so now I'm going to guard them with my life, or find them on eBay (lol).

On one of the other gardenweb message boards, one person would lift the top hinge-pin on the door and place a loop of clothes line over the pin, then over to the next door, and over to the closet door, and back again, in order to hang her clothes indoors to dry in the winter. I also have a number of drying racks, but don't very often have to use them. Those we used over furnace floor vents to dry wet gloves/mittens, scarves, etc.

Drying clothes indoors can have consequences. All that extra humidity in the house, even in the basement, isn't good for the house or the people in it.

Having an exhaust fan to the outside in such a room is a possible solution but that would draw outdoor air into the house that in summertime gives the A/C system an added load to deal with.

Be on the lookout for mold and mildew. Including in the walls and ceilings. Or, close off the room completely and use a dehumidifier when you put in the wet clothes.

Snidely, you mean like when I hang the clothes out in the winter till they're frozen solid, then bring them in to thaw? :-) We love the smell of the clothes, they smell so fresh, and the extra humidity is welcome in the winter.

These particular ones are steaming in the cold air.

Indoor air in wintertime has typically low relative humidity - ie, it's dry. The colder it is outside, the drier it will be inside. Those clothes in the photo are giving off moisture with the "steam", but maybe would make a dry inside more comfortable as they defrost inside.

But honestly, having a humid room in a basement in wintertime is also not a great idea, because the water vapor would condense on the colder surfaces and wet them. Same problem.

I don't know about other rooms, but I have decades of experience drip drying lots of clothes at a time in bathrooms, in different climates, and have never had a condensation or mold problem, even when washing and squishing excess water out by hand. I'm sure that some people must have had those kinds of issues, for it to come up, but under normal conditions it's fine. I have visited some places where you dare not hang clothes out in the air because there's so much humidity that the clothes get wetter rather than drying.

OTOH, sun will fade and bleach like the dickens and isn't a good idea if your purpose is preserving the color.

We dry all our clothes indoors all year in the basement and have for many years. There are no signs of mold/mildew anywhere, but I can see how this might happen if you aren't conscious about climate control (humidity/temperature/air-flow), hung laundry more frequently than the twice a week like we do, or hung really large amounts of clothing (we max out at 2 loads). Our home is 9-years old, so the basement is quite sound and no water infiltration or dampness anywhere.

The drying room isn't a finished room - concrete on one side and open studs on 2 sides - so it's not enclosed with sheet rock. During 6-months out of the year there is a dehumidifier running in the basement - a necessity in Kansas. The relative humidity is never higher than 45-50% (with an air temperature of 65-70°F) in the summer, and the humidity is always much lower in the winter.

I track the relative humidity in the basement at all times because we have a food storage room where the humidity needs to be regulated for optimal storage. Because we also move the air over the wet clothes with a ceiling fan, and a floor fan on the items hanging from a hanger on the rod, the moisture actually dissipates very quickly. Even sheets and pants dry quickly. Pants/slacks/jeans dry quickly because I hang them up-side down from the pants hem. I pin one leg to one line (maintaining the crease in the pants), and the other leg to the line in front of that so the crotch (which typically dries slowly if you hang pants from the waist) is open to the air-flow from the ceiling fan. The weight from the body of the pants actually aids in pulling out any wrinkles and gives pants a nice crease. Everything is dry in a few hours.

-Grainlady

I'm surprised no one suggested "Dryel" or one of those home use in-dryer-dry cleaning kits. I've used them a couple of times with good results. They come with a tube of pre-treat spot cleaner, then you put the item in a big plastic bag with the Dryel product, tumble it in your dryer with heat, and it comes out fresh. No, it doesn't remove stains or dirt much, but it gives it a nice fresh odor. I used it on my sweaters when I was working and they came out decent.

An expensive shirt company - Finley - said the worst thing you can you to a treasured shirt is send it to the cleaners. They take the life out of it. Hand washing is no big deal to me. You can also put a little liquid detergent on the obvious areas of need and then use ur shower sprayer to wash it down. I have seen people do that with silk. It seems to be a gentle way to take care of good pieces. My washer is a front end and a bad choice. It wrings clothes.

Speaking about male dress shirts, in some occupations, there is no substitute for a clean and professionally laundered shirt every day. That was true for my career. It does very much shorten the life of the article, but neither I nor my wife had the time or the interest to try to reproduce the result at home. I still take those shirts to the cleaners (to be laundered, not dry cleaned) and the cost is nominal - a buck or two per item.

When I find a shirt I really like, I buy an extra one or two knowing that the useful life is limited. I looked at it as just a personal cost of the job, as do those who have expensive commuting expenses or have to buy tools or other things for their jobs out of their own funds.

Just for the record, silk is protein and highly washable. It's rare to have dyes that run because they're heat set in the first place. The thing to look out for with silk is the non-woven interfacings and other materials that give the garment shape. I wear a lot of unstructured silk (no interfacings) and wash it in the machine with my regular laundry, and it comes out perfectly. I do hang dry because so much else needs hang drying, so I don't know how tumbling would affect it.

I also get the feeling from this discussion that some cleaning places are much harsher on clothes than the ones I'm used to. Our locals don't use perc. The laundered shirts don't wear any faster than they did when we did them at home. The sheets wore out less quickly (though that might be partially a different kind of sheets), though the duvet cover buttons broke more often in their mangle. They actually do excellent work.

Vossner.....I frequently purchase polo shirts for Robert and other knit cotton garments from LLBean and elsewhere. I wouldn't be caught dead sending them to the cleaners.

I wash those articles in cold water, gentle or handwash cycle, and turn each piece inside out before tossing into the washer. I use less detergent than what is directed on the bottle, don't pack the washer and dry on low in the dryer with no softener.

I have no complaints whatsoever about the appearance of these pieces, which we pretty much live in for much of the year. I love them!