5 Ways On How To Sustainably Take Care Of Your Clothes


Whether you thrift for vintage styles or buy brand new, for the sake of your bank account, you should want your clothes to last a long time. The stakes have been raised even higher with growing concerns of climate catastrophe, and everyone’s scrambling to figure out how to shrink their carbon footprint.

5 Ways On How To Sustainably Take Care Of Your Clothes. Photo by  Dom J . Let’s start with a tragic truth: businesses won’t act until the market incentivizes them to do so. Whether that be by legal changes making the penalties for environmental damage outweigh the cost of business, or collectively changing our habits so businesses will follow suit. I’ll be honest here, I’m neither a lawyer nor a politician. There isn’t much I — or any other individual — can do about it, except change my own personal habits. The first of which is the fact that we buy too many clothes.

As stated by The Guardian , manufacturing fast-fashion contributes more to climate change than air and sea travel. At least half of those items are destined for a landfill within a year. You’ve heard of the usual culprits: Forever21, Zara, H&M, Fashion Nova, Nike and the list could extend to every department store in every mall across the globe.

The worst part is, as cute as some of these items are, a lot of the times they feel as cheap as they are. Loose seams, unhemmed edges, the fabric you could poke a hole through — it makes you wonder if they’re making the clothes this way to force us to buy it more often. So, since I’m one of the many embarrassed millionaires that depends on affordable clothing, I’ve been looking into ways I can do my part to tackle consumerism. The secret is to just take better care of your clothes after you buy them.

Manual Washing

Let’s be honest. Even when clothes have a little hand market on their tags, no one hand-washes their clothes. In today’s world, there’s just not enough time in the day to reliably hand wash a week’s worth of clothing. Today, in lieu of the washboards of the old days (which you can still get and use if you want to try that option) there are now manual clothes washers on the market.

Originally used by campers, these are smaller and portable, making them perfect for apartment life. They use less water, less or no electricity, less detergent, and can get your laundry done in less than ten minutes. After all, most of us don’t soil our clothes so heavily that we must have a heavy-duty wash. Perhaps you went mud wrestling in a white suit, in which case I won’t judge. But, for your everyday wear, if you have a few minutes to spare, why not give one a try?

Air Drying

There are many products on the market to accomplish this, and that’s assuming you want to buy a dedicated space to hang your wet clothes. If just throwing them across the top of the door or shower curtain rod doesn’t work for you, alternatives include foldable drying...

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