How to wash jeans in a washing machine

You might be sur­prised to know that jeans that are so durable at first glance need del­i­cate care? In order to keep attrac­tive den­im prod­ucts as long as pos­si­ble, you need to fol­low a num­ber of sim­ple rules, which we will talk about.

We will tell you how, with what means and with what things you can wash den­im trousers.

Jeans Features

The secret of den­im lies in the com­po­si­tion and struc­ture of the threads. They are twist­ed from cot­ton fibers on spe­cial machines. Here are the main prop­er­ties that den­im is endowed with:

1. Cot­ton pro­vides the fab­ric with breath­able and hygro­scop­ic prop­er­ties. There­fore, in jeans clothes it is not hot even in the heat. Threads absorb and release mois­ture well.

2. A spe­cial twill weave gives the fab­ric vol­ume, strength and wear resis­tance.

3. Twist­ed cot­ton threads are able to stretch when wet and worn and twist again at high tem­per­a­tures.

4. New, often even expen­sive jeans, have excess dye, which turns into water when washed.

5. The nat­ur­al com­po­si­tion of the thread makes it unsta­ble to phys­i­cal wear. The fab­ric becomes thin­ner and torn in places of con­stant fric­tion.

These fea­tures affect the means and meth­ods that we choose to care for jeans. The main fea­tures of care are the fre­quen­cy of wet pro­cess­ing of trousers, the use of suit­able modes and deter­gents.

We have select­ed the most impor­tant rules for wash­ing and car­ing for jeans. After read­ing them, per­haps you will change the usu­al style of car­ing for jeans, there­by extend­ing the life of your favorite things.

Why denim shouldn’t be washed often

Due to the abil­i­ty of the fab­ric to mask small dirt, den­im is not often washed. We are not talk­ing about chil­dren’s clothes, which should always be kept clean.

You might won­der why you should­n’t wash den­im often. The fact is that with con­stant fric­tion, expo­sure to deter­gents and bleach­es, the fol­low­ing hap­pens:

1. Cot­ton fibers become loose, thin­ner and torn.

2. Places of per­ma­nent folds wear out faster.

3. The dye grad­u­al­ly fades.

4. The fab­ric stretch­es and deforms in places.

Jeans should be wet cleaned after 5–6 uses. If you only wore pants once, you can safe­ly put them back in the clos­et. If you wear them infre­quent­ly, then you may need to wash them every six months, or maybe less. The aver­age fre­quen­cy of wash­ing jeans is 1 time in 4 months.

But of course you should­n’t go to extremes. Use com­mon sense and tidy things up as need­ed. If you have a stain on your trousers, do not put off wash­ing. The soon­er the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is removed, the bet­ter. Old stains are dif­fi­cult to remove from jeans. The point is indi­go dye, which quick­ly dis­col­ors under the influ­ence of chem­i­cals.

Washing alternative

If you want to fresh­en up your clothes or if there is a smell, you should not imme­di­ate­ly send your jeans to the wash­ing machine. There are 2 options for quick­ly restor­ing the appear­ance.

Night ventilation

Hang­ing out at night in fresh air will allow you to ven­ti­late the fab­ric, remove odors. Night­time humid­i­ty will even out stretch­i­ness, and frost will give things the smell of morn­ing fresh­ness. This method can be applied to oth­er clothes that need a lit­tle cheer up.

Freezing in the refrigerator compartment

This unusu­al method kills bac­te­ria, restores tis­sue stretch, and elim­i­nates odors. First you need to remove the stains and sprin­kle the den­im with vine­gar from the spray bot­tle.

To car­ry out the freez­ing pro­ce­dure, jeans are fold­ed into a plas­tic bag, and then into the freez­er. After freez­ing, they need to be tak­en out and hung up to weath­er the smell of vine­gar.

Modes and suitable detergents

We rec­om­mend that you select the pro­grams “Del­i­cate”, “Hand” or “Quick Wash” on wash­ing machines. They have an opti­mal tem­per­a­ture and spin mode for jeans.

Nat­ur­al jeans should be washed at a tem­per­a­ture not exceed­ing 30–40 degrees and a spin speed of 400 rpm. With strong heat and exces­sive wring­ing, den­im fibers shrink, and the item can sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease in size.

When choos­ing deter­gents, it is worth giv­ing pref­er­ence to liq­uid com­po­si­tions, since the par­ti­cles of the wash­ing pow­der clog into the fibers and make the fab­ric rough. If only pow­der is avail­able, use half the usu­al dose.

Bleach should not be used to pre­serve the col­or of jeans, unless it is your delib­er­ate deci­sion to light­en the fab­ric. With fre­quent use of bleach­ing agents, in addi­tion to col­or loss, the qual­i­ty of the fab­ric itself dete­ri­o­rates: the threads fluff up, become loose, thin­ner and torn.

Pre-preparation of things

For high-qual­i­ty wash­ing, clothes must first be pre­pared. First you need to remove all things and garbage from your pock­ets. This will pre­vent dam­age to the drum of the machine and dam­age to the jeans. Then fol­low these steps:

1. Sep­a­rate things by col­or. You can’t wash black jeans even with blue ones. Hav­ing shed, black paint will leave dark stains on blue fab­ric. Accord­ing­ly, in order to avoid stain­ing, you can­not wash white trousers with col­ored ones. Only if you are com­plete­ly sure that things will not shed, you can put them in the wash at the same time.

2. Get rid of exist­ing stains and dirt first. The bot­tom of the legs can be cleaned with a brush and laun­dry soap. Remove stub­born stains with spe­cial prod­ucts for den­im (“Van­ish”, “Big Wash”, “Antipy­atin”). Greasy traces are well washed with Fairy dish­wash­ing deter­gent or vine­gar.

3. Turn pants inside out. Fas­ten all but­tons and zip­pers. This will keep the locks in work­ing con­di­tion, pro­tect the decor (if any) from dam­age, reduce fab­ric wear and pre­serve col­or.

Companion items for co-washing

Now, based on the pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion, you can choose the para­me­ters of things with which jeans can be washed.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers rec­om­mend wash­ing den­im sep­a­rate­ly from oth­er items. Per­haps this is true for large fam­i­lies, where you can throw 3–4 pairs of jeans into the machine at the same time.

In oth­er cas­es, we con­sid­er it appro­pri­ate to fol­low the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions:

1. Choose items that are sim­i­lar in fab­ric den­si­ty and col­or for co-wash­ing. Jeans are usu­al­ly washed with cot­ton items. To keep blue jeans from fad­ing, wash them with the same dark clothes. And to fix the col­or, add a lit­tle vine­gar to the wash.

2. Feel free to take socks as com­pan­ions. But in this case, choose things of the same tone. To pre­vent socks from get­ting into jeans pock­ets, iso­late them in a spe­cial wash­ing bag.

3. The con­tro­ver­sial issue of simul­ta­ne­ous wash­ing of under­wear and out­er­wear can be solved as fol­lows: if you don’t have a fad about bac­te­ria that can be found in large quan­ti­ties in jeans and migrate to under­wear and cause skin dis­eases dur­ing wash­ing, you can safe­ly put things in a com­mon drum. As prac­tice shows, for a per­son who mon­i­tors his own hygiene, such unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tions are exclud­ed.

4. With jeans, you can wash tex­tile sneak­ers, if you first wash the sole well from dirt. Choose the same col­or of things to exclude their mutu­al stain­ing.

5. Avoid putting thin del­i­cate items, knit­ted and lace prod­ucts togeth­er with jeans in the machine. Trousers have met­al ele­ments that can dam­age thin fab­ric and pull out the loops of knitwear.

6. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to wash bed linen with jeans only for the rea­son that the wash­ing mode for bed linen is 60 degrees.

Here are exam­ples of com­pan­ion items for wash­ing jeans:

How to wash jeans

If the issue of car­ing for jeans is real­ly very impor­tant to you, we offer you an overview of spe­cial wash­ing prod­ucts designed tak­ing into account the char­ac­ter­is­tics of den­im.

1. 
   BiMax Jeans. The tool, made in EU, has the form of a gel. It dis­solves well in water. It helps to pre­serve and restore the col­or of clothes and removes stains. The aver­age price is 3 dol­lars.

2. 
   Amway Home SA8 Black. Amer­i­can prod­uct, 1 liter at a price of 15$. Works in the tem­per­a­ture range from 15 to 90 degrees. Helps to hold paint, com­plete­ly washed out of the fab­ric. Can be used for chil­dren’s cloth­ing due to nat­ur­al active ingre­di­ents.

3. 
   Lux pro­fes­sion­al. Ger­man liq­uid prod­uct in the form of a gel is avail­able in a 1 liter plas­tic con­tain­er. Eco­nom­ic con­sump­tion and active for­mu­la pro­vides long and reli­able care for den­im. Price — 300–3,5 dol­lars.

4. 
   Coral Jeans. Liq­uid prod­uct with a vol­ume of 1.5 liters, made in Ger­many. It has a pleas­ant aro­ma and pro­nounced care qual­i­ties, thanks to which jeans do not lose col­or for a long time. Active at 30 degrees.

5. 
   STORK JEANS liq­uid laun­dry deter­gent. The domes­tic brand offers an active deter­gent that starts work­ing at 25 degrees, retains col­or and removes dif­fi­cult stains. The aver­age price is 2 dol­lars.

6. 
   Gel-con­cen­trate “Big wash”. Deter­gent for wash­ing jeans was released in EU. Main­tains fab­ric qual­i­ty while remov­ing stub­born dirt. The aver­age cost is 2 dol­lars.

7. 
   NORDLAND Den­im Balm. Ger­man rem­e­dy, 750 ml. Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range — 20–60 degrees. Gen­tly eras­es and removes impu­ri­ties. Suit­able for all types of wash­ing machines. Made from nat­ur­al safe ingre­di­ents. The aver­age price is 380 rubles.

In con­clu­sion, we note that jeans are not uni­forms that require strict wear­ing. This is a thing that you cre­ate your­self. Over time, it only improves, acquir­ing a com­fort­able fit and indi­vid­ual fea­tures. It would be a pity to lose a favorite thing. There­fore, when car­ing for jeans, fol­low some sim­ple rules and fol­low some pre­cau­tions to avoid pre­ma­ture dam­age.