How to remove lint from clothes

Having lint stick to your favourite outfit is a bummer! Especially so if it’s a dark coloured outfit!  Let’s address this fuzzy, pesky problem with a few simple solutions – but first – let’s look at the problem!

The problem:
If you know what causes lint, then you can choose to wash those items separately and avoid this problem from ever happening again.

If it wasn’t a paper tissue that caused your clothes to be covered in white fluff, then the most likely culprits are items such as  towels (especially new ones), items made of flannel whether shirts, blankets or throws and obvious items such as chenille bedspreads or fluffy cushion covers. All of these are super likely to shed in the washing machine and contaminate everything else they are washed with. 

The solutions:
There are many solutions to this issue:

• Re-wash with white vinegar: The obvious solution is to re-wash the item. Some swear by the old wives’ remedy of adding a cup of vinegar to the final rinse cycle and claim that this helps to ‘lift’ the lint from the clothes. We have tried it twice and both times it worked – coincidence? Perhaps – but certainly worth a try.
• Dry your clothes in a commercial dryer: Visit your local Laundromat and place the items in their powerful commercial dryers. With a more powerful extraction rate than domestic dryers, Laundromat dryers can help reduce if not completely eliminate the lint on your clothes. Using your local Laundromat also means that you can run a greater volume of lint-riddled clothes through their dryers at once - than you could at home. The smallest dryer in a Laundromat is usually a 14kg capacity dryer – which is the equivalent of 3 oval laundry baskets of laundry – just to give you a ‘visual’.
• Scouring pad: Tedious perhaps - but a scratchy scouring pad is what many people use to remove lint from dry clothes. Just dampen the scouring pad first to soften it and scrub off lint like a pro.
• Sticky-tape: Whatever you call it…. Scotch-tape, Sello-tape or masking tape - any tape with adhesive qualities can work wonders on dry clothing. Just use it to pick up each piece of lint and you’ll score a lint-free outfit! Wrap it around your hand (sticky-side out) and dab the lint off - or - lay it across your clothes and rip it off Band-Aid style!
• Lint brush: If you enjoy wearing dark clothes – then you might want to invest in a lint roller or brush to keep in your laundry room just in case. Lint removers  come in different types – from the sticky ones that you unroll, to the equally sticky ones that are ‘gummy’ and you rinse off … to the ones made of that (usually red) creepy-feeling  one-way fabric  that feels like a cat’s tongue – ha ha ha! You know what we mean! There are even battery operated lint removers – although they can be quite ‘drastic’ and are better suited to removing pill than lint.

In future there are many things you can do to prevent this from happening again:

• Separate lint-producing items like towels from lint-attracting materials
• Turn out pockets to remove tissues and the like  before washing
• Wash clothes that shed fibres  inside out
• Don’t overload your machine