How to wash socks in the machine and by hand

Socks are a hot top­ic for mod­ern fash­ion­istas. Some copies are like works of art. There­fore, more and more often the ques­tion aris­es of how to prop­er­ly care for an impor­tant part of the wardrobe. Moms of tod­dlers are puz­zled by this issue, since chil­dren’s socks get dirty quick­ly, like all the clothes of lit­tle explor­ers. And, even for those peo­ple who choose con­ser­vatism, the issue of sock care aris­es dai­ly.

If you want to keep your socks look­ing their best for as long as pos­si­ble, fol­low our tips.

How often should you wash your socks

The usu­al pro­ce­dure for replac­ing socks comes down to the fol­low­ing rule: change dai­ly, wash as you accu­mu­late or need.

It is not at all nec­es­sary to start the wash­ing machine because of one pair. Also, do not wash socks sep­a­rate­ly from oth­er clothes. The main thing is to sort by col­or and type of fab­ric.

In case of emer­gency, you can quick­ly wash the socks by hand.

The rule changes if you put a stain on the jer­sey. In this case, you do not need to post­pone wash­ing indef­i­nite­ly. Remem­ber: the fresh­er the stain, the eas­i­er it is to remove.

To save time and choose the right solu­tion, we offer a small check­list:

1. Socks need to be changed dai­ly. A light degree of soil­ing will avoid rough wash­ing, which leads to defor­ma­tion of knitwear and the for­ma­tion of pel­lets.

2. Wash as need­ed, or when enough socks have accu­mu­lat­ed that you think you can turn on the wash­ing machine.

3. When stor­ing in a laun­dry bas­ket, it is advis­able to put one sock into anoth­er. In this case, you will save your­self the trou­ble of look­ing for a pair. If pos­si­ble, col­lect dirty socks in a sep­a­rate con­tain­er.

4. We rec­om­mend that you imme­di­ate­ly wash heavy dirt and stains. Old dirt pen­e­trates deep into the fibers and is much more dif­fi­cult to wash off. There is a need to use stain removers and bleach­es.

Rules for washing knitwear

The gen­er­al rules for wash­ing tex­tiles also apply to wash­ing socks. Here are the most ratio­nal require­ments:

1. Sep­a­rate knitwear by col­or. Some spec­i­mens may shed heav­i­ly.

2. Before wash­ing, be sure to turn your socks inside out to remove dust accu­mu­lat­ed there.

3. To pre­vent socks from get­ting lost among clothes, put them in a spe­cial laun­dry net or adapt a pil­low­case with a zip­per for this.

4. Choose the right tem­per­a­ture set­ting. Cot­ton prod­ucts with­stand heat up to 100 degrees. You can even boil them. For syn­thet­ics, a mode with a tem­per­a­ture not high­er than 60 degrees is suit­able. Wool­lens are best washed by hand in luke­warm water.

5. As deter­gents, choose ordi­nary wash­ing pow­ders, enzyme deter­gents, soaps, fab­ric soft­en­ers.

Machine wash

For those who are faced with this ques­tion for the first time, let’s break down the process of wash­ing socks with a machine.

Necessary equipment

Before you start wash­ing, make sure you have the right sup­plies and equip­ment. We will need:

1. Wash­ing machine.

2. Mesh bag with a zip­per (option­al).

3. Pow­der or liq­uid deter­gent.

4. Laun­dry soap, bleach, stain remover.

5. Rinse aid (con­di­tion­er) for linen.

Preparing for washing

Before send­ing sock knitwear to the drum of the machine, you need to per­form prepara­to­ry pro­ce­dures:

1. Sort your socks by col­or. Dark, light and col­ored should be washed sep­a­rate­ly. If all socks are of dif­fer­ent col­ors, choose things that are close in shades or test for dye fast­ness. To do this, wet the prod­uct and attach a light nap­kin to it. Shed­ding fab­rics will imme­di­ate­ly give them­selves away by paint­ing the nap­kin in the appro­pri­ate col­or.

2. If the sole is already fair­ly tram­pled, the white prod­ucts have become gray, and the black ones have become glossy, it is nec­es­sary to wash the socks first. To do this, turn the jer­sey inside out, wet it, rub it with laun­dry soap and leave it to lie down for 15–30 min­utes. Then rub the prod­ucts a lit­tle, rinse and send them to the machine.

3. In case of heavy soil­ing, before wash­ing, use the bleach­ing and stain removal meth­ods that we will sug­gest lat­er in the arti­cle.

Mode selection and washing

Now we send the pre­pared socks to the big wash. To do this, fol­low our instruc­tions:

1. Load things of the same col­or into the drum and close it.

2. Select a wash­ing pro­gramme. Wash suf­fi­cient­ly soiled items in the usu­al way, which includes a full wash cycle, rins­ing and spin­ning. If the laun­dry only needs to be refreshed, you should use the quick wash cycle. If nec­es­sary, use the appro­pri­ate but­tons to adjust the water tem­per­a­ture and spin pow­er.

3. Pour the required amount of pow­der into the pow­der com­part­ment up to the mark. If you are using fast mode, you can cut the pow­der dose in half. Place the liq­uid prod­uct in cap­sules into the drum.

4. Press the start but­ton.

5. After stop­ping the drum and unlock­ing the machine door, remove the laun­dry imme­di­ate­ly. Pro­longed expo­sure to wet tex­tiles in an enclosed space can cause an unpleas­ant odor.

6. Hang things out to dry. Avoid dry­ing white socks on a met­al radi­a­tor. This can lead to rust spots that are very dif­fi­cult to remove.

7. Store your socks in a dry place by stack­ing them one inside the oth­er.

These rec­om­men­da­tions apply to the care of any type of socks: adults and chil­dren. The only excep­tion for wash­ing chil­dren’s clothes is the use of hypoal­ler­genic deter­gents.

Handwash

This type of wash­ing is con­sid­ered del­i­cate and has a whole set of advan­tages:

1. A use­ful skill is use­ful if it is not pos­si­ble to wash things in the car: while trav­el­ing or in the event of a pow­er out­age.

2. The use of man­u­al labor saves water and ener­gy con­sump­tion.

3. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly less chance of dam­age to prod­ucts, their defor­ma­tion and molt­ing.

At the same time, hand wash­ing requires free time and phys­i­cal effort.

Peculiarities

The pro­ce­dure for wash­ing socks by hand is dif­fer­ent. that all actions are per­formed man­u­al­ly: from wash­ing to spin­ning.

Sequenc­ing:

1. Sort items by col­or.

2. For heavy soil­ing, pre-wash, stain remove or bleach.

3. Type in a basin or oth­er con­tain­er about 10 cm of water.

4. The water tem­per­a­ture should not be high and com­fort­able for the hands. When wash­ing woolen socks, use water at room tem­per­a­ture.

5. Pro­tect sen­si­tive skin with rub­ber gloves.

6. Dis­solve the right amount of pow­der in water. Usu­al­ly 3 liters. 0.5 tbsp required pow­der.

7. Put your socks in a con­tain­er and let them soak for 5 min­utes. At this time, you can stir things by mak­ing cir­cu­lar move­ments with your palm.

8. After that, do a gen­er­al wash: take things with your hands and rub them togeth­er. Most of the dust and light dirt will go away already at this stage.

9. Now move on to the indi­vid­ual wash. Take each sock and rub it between your fin­gers, mov­ing along the entire length. Dip the jer­sey in water and rub again.

10. Wring out clean clothes and put them sep­a­rate­ly for fur­ther rins­ing. You can imme­di­ate­ly put a basin with clean water next to it.

11. Rinse washed socks thor­ough­ly to remove deter­gent residue. To do this, you can use run­ning tap water or alter­nate­ly rinse in a con­tain­er of clean water. If desired, add fab­ric soft­en­er to the final rinse.

12. Wring out the jer­sey thor­ough­ly and hang it up to dry. The best option is to dry in the fresh air or in a draft.

Pre-treatment agents for heavy soiling

As promised, here are addi­tion­al prod­ucts that will help get rid of heavy pol­lu­tion and stains. The pro­posed funds are pre­pared inde­pen­dent­ly from the avail­able com­po­nents. You can also use spe­cial house­hold chem­i­cals.

Homemade composition for dirty white and colored socks

This method includes the most com­mon com­po­nents and is suit­able for pro­cess­ing heav­i­ly soiled items. Removes old stains and dirt. Do not use this prod­uct on wool socks.

For work you will need:

1. water (cold and hot);

2. laun­dry soap;

3. wash­ing pow­der;

4. table salt;

5. bak­ing soda;

6. ammo­nia solu­tion (ammo­nia);

7. met­al saucepan;

Sequenc­ing:

1. Wet your socks and wash them with laun­dry soap.

2. Rub the knitwear with the same soap, leave for 30–60 min­utes, then rinse.

3. In a met­al saucepan, put 2 tbsp. l. wash­ing pow­der, 2 tbsp. l. salt, 2 tbsp. l. soda, 1 tbsp. l. ammo­nia. Pour the mix­ture with 2 liters of hot water (brought almost to a boil).

4. Put the socks into the solu­tion, bring the liq­uid to a boil and boil for 5 min­utes.

5. Let the con­tain­er cool down. You can leave things in the solu­tion overnight.

6. Take out the laun­dry and rinse in clean water.

Whitening agent for light colored socks

This method will restore snow-white fresh­ness even to worn socks. The com­po­nents are in every home or are avail­able for pur­chase at the near­est store.

To pre­pare bleach you will need:

1. plas­tic basin;

2. 3 liters of warm water;

3. 1 st. l. hydro­gen per­ox­ide;

4. 2 tbsp. l. aque­ous solu­tion of ammo­nia (ammo­nia).

Before soak­ing in the solu­tion, wash the socks by hand with laun­dry soap. If heav­i­ly soiled, leave the soapy socks for 10–15 min­utes and then wash them again.

Whiten­ing process:

1. Pour water into a plas­tic basin and add the required amount of hydro­gen per­ox­ide and ammo­nia to it. Mix ingre­di­ents thor­ough­ly.

2. Put your socks in the solu­tion and leave for a while. The bleach­ing peri­od depends on the degree of soil­ing of things. Some­times it may take up to 2 hours.

3. After bleach­ing, wash again with laun­dry soap or deter­gent.

4. Rinse your knitwear well.

Laundry soap for white and colored socks

We will use sim­ple laun­dry soap. This old tried and test­ed tool helps out in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. It will also help in wash­ing socks.

The usage method is extreme­ly sim­ple:

1. Wet your socks and wash them with soap.

2. Lath­er things thick­ly with laun­dry soap. Put them in a plas­tic bag and leave for 12 hours (you can overnight).

3. Take out the treat­ed knitwear, rub it well and rinse it in run­ning water.

Household chemicals

The spe­cial com­po­si­tion of bleach­ing and stain-remov­ing agents is designed to be gen­tle on fab­ric fibers and dyes. How­ev­er, with fre­quent use of chem­i­cals, the fab­ric becomes thin­ner and things become unus­able. After 5–7 wash­es with chlo­rine bleach, socks can be thrown away. In addi­tion, not all things are made from nat­ur­al white fibers. Often the fab­ric is sim­ply dyed white. And with intense expo­sure to deter­gents, the paint is washed off, and things become gray or yel­low.

To restore the puri­ty and white­ness of your favorite socks, you can buy any of the fol­low­ing prod­ucts:

1. 
   Bos max­i­mum. Suit­able for col­ored and white fab­rics. Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range from 30 to 50 degrees Cel­sius.

2. 
   Sar­ma Active. Pow­dered bleach. Can be used for hand and machine wash. Not effec­tive at low water tem­per­a­tures. To remove dif­fi­cult stains, sev­er­al treat­ments are required. Can­not be used on silk and wool.

3. 
   Van­ish oxy action. Fast action liq­uid. Effec­tive­ly removes even the most stub­born stains. Begins to act already at low water tem­per­a­tures. You can soak clothes in the pre­pared solu­tion, or you can apply point­wise to the places of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Suit­able for del­i­cate fab­rics.

4. 
   Per­sol. Domes­tic pow­der deter­gent for white and col­ored linen per­fect­ly copes with var­i­ous stains, removes yel­low­ness and gray plaque. It is most effec­tive at a water tem­per­a­ture of 50 degrees Cel­sius.

5. 
   Chir­ton. Works in both hot and cold water. Removes stub­born dirt from col­ored and light prod­ucts.

6. 
   Eared nan­ny. Suit­able for wash­ing chil­dren’s clothes because it con­tains non-tox­ic ingre­di­ents.

7. 
   Umka. Anoth­er safe bleach for baby clothes. It con­sists of a soapy solu­tion with active oxy­gen.

These prod­ucts are an excel­lent alter­na­tive to chlo­rine bleach­es. Please read the instruc­tions for use before using them. Prop­er­ly main­tained con­cen­tra­tion and time will allow you to get the best result.

Washing baby socks

A fea­ture of car­ing for chil­dren’s things is the use of spe­cial prod­ucts that do not cause irri­ta­tion of sen­si­tive chil­dren’s skin. The wash­ing process itself is no dif­fer­ent from the usu­al. You can use man­u­al and auto­mat­ed pro­cess­ing. The main aspects are the preser­va­tion of the soft­ness and puri­ty of things.

Socks are an impor­tant attribute for a per­son of any age and sta­tus. Fol­low­ing our sim­ple instruc­tions, you can eas­i­ly keep the fresh­ness of your linen, please your loved ones and gain con­fi­dence in the impec­ca­bil­i­ty of your appear­ance.