How to wash linen clothes
Please, please, please avoid chucking your linen in the washing machine with the rest of your clothes. You wouldn’t lob a balloon down a bowling alley, would you? Exactly. Here’s how you should wash your linen.
1: Preparing your washing liquid
All you need is a very small amount of mild detergent. If you’re handwashing (and we recommend handwashing) give the detergent a bit of a mix into some water to make some suds, and that’s it. That’s your washing liquid. Done. No bleach, no fabric softener, none of that stuff.
2: Soaking and washing the linen
Make sure your linen is fully submerged and gently give it a little swish around. A swill, if you will. You want that water lukewarm—not too hot and not too cold, Goldilocks water.
3: Rinsing the soap away
Empty the bowl, fill it with fresh water, and do a bit more swilling.
4: Squeezing out excess water
Take note of the wording here—don’t wring, don’t twist, don’t stretch, but gently squeeze out the excess water. This helps to avoid loss of shape or disfigurement.
5: Drying your linen clothes
Don’t bother with the tumble dryer, it’s not worth the risk. Ideally, lay your linen out on a flat towel, if not, hang them to dry but make sure you’ve squeezed out that excess water so that the linen isn’t weighed down and stretched whilst hanging.
6: Eliminating any creases
Don’t eliminate the creases—that’s our advice. Embrace them. Linen is supposed to crease a little. If you’re going to disregard that advice and iron your linen, please at least do it when the linen is damp so that you don’t wreck the natural fibres.
