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How to Care for Your Sweaters

It’s official: we’ve left the crisp mornings and mild days of fall and moved into winter. More than any other piece of clothing, sweaters exemplify the winter season, but they’re also notoriously difficult pieces of clothing to care for. Here are some tips for extending the life of your sweaters and keeping them in great condition.

• First, figure out what kind of fabric they’re made from. Cotton sweaters can often be treated in a similar way to your other cotton clothes; that is, you can wash them normally. However, wool and cashmere require separate treatment, so always check the labels. A washing machine’s wool or hand-washing setting usually works; just use a baby shampoo or wool/cashmere-specific shampoo. You can also hand wash them, which is as simple as washing them in a bucket and then pressing out the water after laying the sweaters out flat.
• Afterwards, lay sweaters flat to dry in approximately the shape they would be when worn on your body. DO NOT TUMBLE DRY SWEATERS. This will most likely shrink and distort them.
• When you do machine wash sweaters, turn them inside out to avoid pilling. And if you have any doubts about whether it might be a bad idea to wash a specific sweater, just send it to your neighborhood dry cleaner.
• To store sweaters out of season, don’t use mothballs, as they contain toxic chemicals; instead, use cedar balls or herbal sachets. You can buy varieties of these that are specifically intended to keep your clothes safe from moths.
• If possible, avoid hanging your sweaters. But if you do, make sure to use padded hangers, because wire hangers can make permanent and damaging indentations in the shoulders.
• Many people recommend using specifically designed sweater shavers to trim excess material and avoid pilling, but there are also those who say it’s too easy to rip and snag sweaters with these. One alternative is a pumice-like sweater stone, which rubs out the offending materials and is easier on the fabric than the shaver. It’s worth trying both to see what works best for you.
• To avoid pilling or shrinkage of certain fabrics, primarily mohair and wool, it is often easiest just to have them dry-cleaned rather than to try to wash them yourself.
• Sometimes particular knits in sweaters will become overstretched. The way to fix this is called blocking: soak that part of the sweater in warm water until it shrinks a bit—be very careful not to over-shrink, especially with woolens—and lay the washed part on padded towels, which will absorb the moisture. Then, mold the sweater into the shape you desire and, once that shape has been achieved, use pins to hold it down until it dries, at which point it should assume the shape you molded it into.

Because of the tricky fabrics and better quality of some sweaters, they can be difficult items of clothing to care for. Even so, well-maintained sweaters, especially the difficult woolens, can last for years if you care for them properly, so be sure to follow these steps and, when in doubt, let Crest or your local dry cleaner take care of them for you. 

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