GARMENT CARE: Faded

Hello again!

I would like to share with you some tricks that I have learned from washing thousands of clothes for Ghetto Gato. On many occasions the solution to washing problems is very simple and is found in daily use products , however we do not usually stop to 'recover' a garment and on many occasions we directly replace it with another. Since there is soooo much to tell about clothing care, I will divide it into several posts so as not to make it eternal.

On this occasion I will tell you about my experience (and other tricks that I have found on the internet) with fades, how to avoid them and how to solve them .

PRE-FADED HOW TO AVOID THEM?:

• First of all, the most important thing to prevent your clothes from fading over others and your entire laundry being affected is to separate by color 🌈. It may seem silly but it is very important to wash all the white clothes together, the black ones on the other hand and, if possible, separate the colors by tones : warm ❤️ (yellows, oranges, reds and fuchsias) and cold 💙 (greens, purples and blues). You can wash pastel tones with light gray tones and nude colors.

• Washing cold or at 30º maximum will prevent the garments from shedding color on others and also prevents them from shrinking.

• The color black usually leaves the water a reddish color when it fades, avoid wearing clothes that have white details (especially if they are made of cotton) because they can suffer a mishap!

• The red color is the most complicated to wash and the one that tends to fade the most. If you bleach oranges or fuchsias it can help them recover color, although depending on the way you bleach it, it can leave stains. With the passage of time I have realized that cotton, linen or wool garments (natural origin) tend to fade more, be careful with them!

• If you are not sure if the garment will fade, you can do a fade test by soaking a cotton ball with warm water and leaving it on a corner of the garment for about 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes the cotton has taken on color, it means that the garment is color fading.

• Finally, to prevent your clothes from fading you can use an anti-fade wipe (which you will find in the vast majority of supermarkets). When I doubt whether a garment is going to fade or not, I put one wipe instead of the two they suggest. If I'm sure something will fade, it's when I put two wipes. ✌️

THE DAMAGE HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE. HOW TO SOLVE A FADE?

• Something that has worked very well for me on several occasions is to put the washing machine back on before the clothes dry. When I go to hang clothes and I realize that one garment has faded over others, I take the garments that have suffered damage (only those) and put them back in the washing machine on the quick program to avoid wasting water. However, in this second wash I add an anti-fade wipe . In most cases the garments usually recover, my theory is that they recover because the garment has not dried, the color has not set completely and a second wash (without the garment responsible for the fading) causes the color to fade. detach.

• Dye stain removers : there are specific products to remove fade stains but I personally don't like them very much because they waste a lot of water and are not very economical.

• An old way trick that I have read on the internet consists of boiling bay leaves, letting the bay water cool and submerging the garment until the stains disappear.

• Another old trick is to boil many eggshells for a few minutes, turn off the heat and put the faded garment in (be careful, it can shrink!!!). Also that night it will be time to have tortilla for dinner 🍳

Generally the first trick usually works for me and I have never resorted to the other tricks that I mention, but it never hurts to know 🙌

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Finally, a warning , I have put together all these tips by adding my own experience, tricks that I knew and other tricks that I have found on the internet. The fabrics vary, each garment has a different type of dye and, although what I tell you here are general rules, you can find garments with some particularity so these tricks may not work.

In future garment care posts I will talk about how to fix the color of garments so that they do not fade and recover the color of worn-out garments. If you have any questions, suggestions or advice, you can leave them in the comments 👇