T.L.C For  Men's Shirts  

Men's shirts were once the pain in the ironing basket until the manufacturers developed various material combinations that are much easier on a man's skin and much easier to launder and iron. Actually, these days if you do it right you don't even have to iron any more.

The real secret of this super laundry method is taking just that little bit of extra care during the washing and rinsing cycles and then in the drying method.

When you the launderer is doing the washing never put the shirt through a hot wash cycle because this creates wrinkles that are not only hard to iron but do it too often and they become permanent fixtures in the fabric. And that lessens the life of the shirt to the yard only and when you have bought a nice chambray shirt it's a bit too good to be doing the lawn mowing in or worse, ripped up to polish the silver or act as a dusting rag.

When you put the dirty clothes into the washing machine, be careful not to pack the clothes in too tightly because the clothes need to be able to swirl the water and washing soap through and around them. I'm presuming here that you already know enough about doing the laundry so that you separate the whites and coloureds etc?

Set the washing machine cycle on gentle and warm and extra rinse cycles. Don't spin-dry the clothes because this is too hard on the soft fabric and will crease it too much. If you aren't too sure of the strength of the spin cycle it would be a good idea to be standing by for when it starts until you are more familiar with the spin cycle. The shirts need to be wet but not dripping.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a clothes dryer that you can set to gentle tumble that's great but here in  Australia we have clothes lines in our backyards to dry our washing on. We peg our clothes on these lines and use the power of the sun to dry them. One could actually say our laundry is mostly solar powered!

After living in Canada though I know that people in the northern Hemisphere use their clothes dryers all the time and clothes lines don't exist there yet. Maybe they will for the summer months soon as climate change starts to bite a bit more into our purses and wallets? Anyway, back to hanging out these men's shirts.

Have some good quality plastic clothes hangers handy and hang all the men's shirts up carefully smoothing out creases as you put them on the line in partial shade/sun if possible; because you don't want too much sun to fade the colours out of the material.

If you are going to put the men's shirts into a clothes dryer, put the dryer on a cool/gentle cycle and then as soon as it finishes, hang the men's shirts up immediately. If you have a clothes airer to hang them for an hour or two would be good just to let them air and cool. That way they will never be put away slightly damp and get smelly.

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