How To Unshrink Jeans With A Simple Vinegar Solution

Yes, there are worse things in the world than discovering that you accidentally tossed your favorite new pair of skinny jeans in the dryer, and now, they're too small. But in the moment, you're having trouble thinking of anything that's worse. As you stare at them knowing you'll never lose enough inches around your thighs nor enough length in your femurs to make them fit, you can't help but wonder if the rumors are true. Can you unshrink jeans with a simple vinegar solution? The answer is yes! When sed correctly, vinegar creates slack in the fibers to permit them to be gradually stretched. It also aids in removing the built-up soap residues that can cause your jeans to be stiffer, which could make them feel as though they shrunk.

Using vinegar to unshrink jeans might surprise you. On a shelf in your laundry room is a bottle of white vinegar because you heard about the white vinegar laundry hacks you need to know about. But how does vinegar magically make your jeans fit again? We'll break down the steps that make it happen.

You accidentally shrunk a pair of jeans in the dryer. Staring at the mini version of what had gone into the wash a short time ago, it probably is small comfort to know that denim is one of the fabrics that are most likely to shrink in the laundry. The answer to your problem is to try soaking them in a solution of one part vinegar with two parts water. The combination works on the fabric in a way that water alone does not.

White vinegar, like the Happy Belly White Distilled Vinegar from Amazon, is considered a natural fabric softener. The vinegar's acidic properties soften the denim's fibers, which will then be more able to be stretched back to their original size, but be sure the water temperature is lukewarm. Think of how other organic substances react if they're put into vinegar. After a 30-minute soak, the textile fibers shouldn't be as stiff, which should allow you to gently stretch your garment to the size it should be. Once you're done, rinse out the vinegar and let it dry on a towel; repeat as needed.

When you realized that you shrunk your new designer pair of jeans or your teenager's favorite pair, you might be frantically searching for solutions. And "solution" is the perfect word. The answer to fixing the problem of restoring shrunken clothing is in soaking them in a solution that relaxes the fibers enough to gently stretch them, a process that normally would have happened over several wash cycles (called relaxation shrinkage), but that sometimes gets circumvented in early washing/drying cycles, which is why when an article of clothing, like those new pair of jeans shrinks, it usually happens on one of the first washings. 

The white vinegar and water soak could work to save your shrunken jeans, but what if you don't have any vinegar and you need a fast resolution to the problem? There are a few other options that may have the same effect of relaxing the textile fibers. Some tipsters have accomplished this not with vinegar, but in other ways. One simple hack that will help you unshrink your favorite clothes is to soak the garments in hair conditioner. Another option is to unshrink your clothes with the help of a common bathroom item: baby shampoo. But whether it's shampoo, conditioner, or vinegar, relaxing the fibers and giving the jeans a stretch is the key to wearing them again.