I get asked repeatedly about “pilling”.
I recall that back in the day my acrylic sweaters were prone to pilling and my drugstore sweater shaver did the trick.
Now it seems that many of my clothes pill when there is any type of movement or rubbing. For example, you will see it under arm of a sweater or across the chest–especially if you tend to fold your arms frequently.
I also see it with some rayon garments. Here are some tips for you.
1. I pay careful attention to how I wash certain clothes. I have several mesh lingerie bags that I use for these rayon garments. I’m very careful WHAT I wash them with. Some will even say dry clean only. I believe this is because manufacturer’s fear that women will place the garment in the dryer if it says “machine wash”. I also think that dry cleaning does add to the life of a garment. But that gets expensive. The gentle or hand wash cycle on my washer gets a lot of use.
I realize that it is time consuming to do more loads of laundry and that if family members help out, things get thrown in the dryer inadvertently. However, taking a little extra time will help things last longer, and in the long run save you money.
2. I found a sweater shaver at Brookstone a number of years ago that has salvaged many pieces and just helped them look better. It is now called a fabric shaver because we need to use this on many more things than just sweaters! The fabric shaver cannot bring a garment back to life after YEARS of constant wear (please say goodbye to these well worn pieces!) It can help the pilling that occurs sometimes even after a few months. This heavy duty shaver is much better than the small drug store model that sometimes snagged my clothes. I have not had that happen one time with this. It’s well worth the extra dollars.
Do you have trouble with your clothing pilling? If you have any other tips, I’d love to hear!
