Try These Common Household Items To Easily Hand Wash Your Clothes

There are many reasons why you'll probably find yourself hand-washing clothes at some point in your life. A fun reason is travel, a not-so-fun one is a broken washing machine. Then there are the items that have no business tumbling around in a washing machine if you hope to wear them again. Whatever has you filling up your sink for some fabric scrubbing, you already have items around the house or hotel room that will make your manual labor less, well, laborious.

Grab some hand soap or some shampoo for easy-rinsing cleaning power, and leave it all germ-free with some high heat from an iron or a steamer. There's also a product that's best avoided when you're hand-washing your clothes — steer clear of dish soap to avoid seemingly endless rinsing and possibly scratchy results. Choose the right soap, then try our tips for the best way to clean your clothes by hand, and your delicates and dirties will be ready for another wear in no time.

When you're hand washing clothes, you want to walk away with clean wearables that feel good and aren't damaged by the soap formulas. Bathroom essentials like shampoo and liquid hand soap are gentle solutions when doing a load of hand washing. Shampoo is a gentle cleanser that's easy to come by while traveling, and the suds are as easy to wash from clothing fibers as they are from hair.

A bathroom essential that's equally up to the task of hand washing laundry is gentle liquid soap. Commonly found in suitcases and hotel rooms, liquid soap — like hand washing soaps or body gels — tend to be as gentle on fabric as it is on your skin; both are a handy solution for washing garments while you're on the road. However, professional cleaners warn against using shampoos, hand, or body washes that contain extra moisturizers or perfumes that can damage your clothing.

There are many unexpected things you can clean with dish soap, but using it for a load of hand washing has downsides. Dish soap is known for its lovely suds that make scrubbing pans a bit more fun. But the ingredients that create the bubbles are both hard to rinse out of fabric and can leave it with a soapy residue. If that wasn't enough, dish soap-washed clothing can be irritating if you have sensitive skin.

Steamers can do more than remove funky odors from clothing. Many viruses and bacteria like to hitch rides on surfaces, including your clothes. When your garments make their journey through the washing machine, you can kill off those germs with water at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're trying to hand wash your clothes, that level of heat can burn your skin in about three seconds. Instead of inflicting second-degree burns on yourself, stick with hand washing in comfortably warm water, followed by a steam treatment. Use a steam cleaner or fabric steamer to blast the offending garment with heat high enough to kill germs.

Commercial steamers typically pump out steam that's 212 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, and at these temperatures, most bacteria and viruses can't survive. To ensure that germs are put to rest, hold the steamer over the area you're disinfecting for about 30 seconds.