Let’s face it – clothing is expensive. Period. As adults, we often do not have to purchase clothing as regularly as we did when we were younger and we were growing more often. However, clothing for children is expensive too. Sometimes we purchase items that require extra care, such as a trip to the dry cleaners, and sometimes we do not even mean to. I avoid dry clean items like the plague. All I see are dollar signs!
Recently I received a gift. A beautiful faux fur jacket that looks like a vest with a black sweater. It was dry clean only. Sometimes if an item is labeled dry clean only, but can be laundered carefully at home. This was the case with this one, and as I do with most dry clean only items I dropped it in the hand wash cycle of the washing machine, along with a few other items that didn’t necessarily require a gentle cycle.
I have five children as most of you know, so we are giving them each more responsibilities around the home and they help out with various chores on occasion. I asked my son to help with the laundry one day, which was basically to just bring up the dry and clean stuff to the bedrooms, but when he was on his way back down to get another dry load, I asked him to switch the laundry in the washing machine into the dryer, completely forgetting I had the jacket in there. Well into the dryer it went and it was beyond hope when it was removed.
Being a gift, and one that I absolutely loved, I felt so much guilt and considered just sucking it up and going and buying another one. However, I knew the item was extremely expensive, and my significant other had an interesting suggestion when he saw it. The ends of the fur were frayed and matted. He wondered if I brushed out the jacket if it might be salvageable. I thought to myself, what do I have to lose? Guess what? It worked! I took a brush and gently brushed the jacket in all directions until I worked out every kink and mat. I won’t lie and say that a lot of the hair came out on the brush, but the jacket actually looks next to new again.
Just for the record, this also works on stuffed animals (we tried it) and other fur related items. Faux or otherwise.
For more great frugal laundry tips, visit the Frugal Living Blog or see Related Articles below.
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