How to Properly Wash ‘Hand Wash Only’ Clothes

Sometimes, you’re so excited about buying new clothes that you completely forgot to check its labels for washing. Later on, you find out that the clothes you purchased are “hand wash only.” You may be tempted to just ignore it and put it in the washer, but you should reconsider and think that the tag is on there for a reason. You should manually wash the clothing you bought.

With “hand wash only” clothes being very delicate and requiring hand-washing, how exactly do you wash them? Do you use soap? How much of the soap? It’s a lot easier than you think.

Washing delicates that require hand washing is pretty straightforward.

Here are the instructions you can use:

1. Make sure you wash your delicates in a clean sink or a large basin that has warm water filled in it.
2. Grab some mild detergent, such as Woolite, and put a few drops of it in the sink or basin.
3. After putting in the detergent, swirl it with clothing inside or knead it (e.g. like you’re kneading bread) for a few minutes so that they’re all soaped up. Just make sure you’re keeping an eye to not overdo this.
4. If you’re using silk clothing, you can add in a few drops of hair conditions to your final rinse and add some extra silkiness to your silk clothing.
5. Make sure you rinse your clothes thoroughly and then comfortably squeeze out as much water as possible.
6. Lastly, lay out the clothes flat to dry.

It’s worth noting that if your clothes aren’t labeled as “hand wash only” when checking, but are delicate, you can still safety wash them in your washing machine using gentle cycle.

The Laundress states:

The machine equivalent to handwashing, this cycle uses warm or cold water with low or no spin. It’s the shortest and most gentle cleaning cycle. If the machine defaults to warm water, we recommend you override this by selecting cold water. (That’s what we do here at The Laundress headquarters with our machine.)

Select the Delicate cycle when washing “delicate” items. Err on the side of caution—for items in question, we always default to delicate treatment and then scale up if necessary.

The Laundress

It’s important that you read the labels on your clothing very carefully. The labels give your clothing and important details you need to make sure they last you as long as possible. If you don’t properly wash “hand wash only” clothing, they won’t last you very long.