Clothing Hacks That Will Save You Money

As a guy, I am of the opinion that you should keep wearing new clothes until they actually disintegrate off of your body.

Now I know not everyone subscribes to this wear it till it breaks mentality but you can extend the life or breathe new life into your clothes with these money-saving hacks for clothing.

Hacks for your Jeans

Jeans are a staple of any closet. Taking care of or preserving those jeans can make them last much longer and save you a bunch of money from having to replace that pair that fits just right.

Wash Your Jeans the Right Way – Dark jeans tend to fade over time. One of the best ways to keep that dark color is to turn them inside out when you wash them and make sure all zippers and fasten all buttons.

Make sure that you do not cram your jeans into the washer. All those metal pieces can snag on other clothing and wear them out.

The newer the jeans the gentler the cycle. Use that principle in the wash and you can keep the color many more washes.

Use a color-preserving laundry detergent. Tide TotalCare and Woolite Dark got top recognition from Good Housekeeping for neutralizing the chlorine in the water and helping fabrics hold onto their colors longer.

Once nice and clean let them air dry instead of putting them in the dryer. If you do dry them and are seeing a lot of lint in the trap then you are leaving them in too long.

Fixing your Jeans Waist – Apparently women’s jeans are made two ways. Either they fit in the waist and not in the hips and thighs or they fit in the hips and thighs and not in the waist. Autumn over at ItsAlwaysAutumn.com has a great guide to adding elastic to the waist in jeans and making them fit all over.

Altering Jeans with an Identical Hem – Another problem with women’s jeans is that you can find a pair that fits everywhere but is too long. Cathe Holden over at JustSomethingMade.com has detailed and easy instructions on how to hem jeans. Looks like even I could handle this sewing project.

Try Jeans On Without Trying Them On – From time to time we are going to have to break down and actually purchase a new pair of jeans. This is a pain because you have to get undressed, pull the new jeans on, look at yourself in the mirror, and blah blah blah till you find one you like.

Take the jeans with the button attached and wrap the waist line around your neck. If the ends of the jeans fit around your neck comfortably then they should fit.

Zipper Fixes

Zippers are a common reason people get rid of a piece of clothing. Use these quick fixes to

Zipper Holder

If you have ever had a pair of pants where the zipper will not stay up then you know how frustrating that can be. The good news is that the fix is SUPER easy. Take a cheap keyring and loop in through the zipper. Once you zip your pants up look the key ring over the button and no more exposure problems.

Unstick a Zipper

I found six different ways to unstick a stuck zipper. All of them deal with applying a substance to the zipper. Those substances include:

• Vaseline
• Olive Oil
• Elmer’s Slide All Spray Lubricant
• Clear Bar Soap
• Graphite Pencil
• Windex (it really DOES work on everything)

Hacks for Stains

I hate getting a stain on a favorite shirt. Not only do I end up walking around with it for the rest of the day, I frequently have problems getting the stain out later. These tips are sure to help my lack of stain removal acumen.

Bleach Stains – Use a Sharpee permanent marker of the same color as the fabric. This works best with black or navy blue clothing

Makeup Stains – Shaving cream will remove most makeup stains and especially foundation.

Red Wine – It seems funny but white wine will remove red wine stains.

Oil stains – Many oil stains can get absorbed by talcum powder. If that does not do the job apply dawn dish soap before you wash.

Leather stains – For salt and water stains use a mixture of cold water and white vinegar to get the stain out.

Grass stains – One part dish soap and two parts hydrogen peroxide will get the grass out

Lipstick and Ink stains – Seems odd to me but hairspray seems to be the treatment of choice

Arm Pit stains – Hydrogen peroxide to the rescue

Deodorant Marks – And I thought my wife kept baby wipes around only for the kids

BBQ sauce stain – Dish detergent mixed with white vinegar will get the grease and sauce out.

Berries fruit and veggie stains – place over bowl of boiling water

Coffee stain – baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.

Dirt and mud – Any dish soap with grease fighting elements but that ultimately leads you back to Dawn.

Mustard, Mayo, and Ketchup stains – time to make good use of tried and true soap and water.

Crayon Stains – Freeze the garment and scrape off all the crayon that you can. Next work liquid dish soap into the stain, let stand for a few minutes, and rinse under warm water.   Finally run through your washing machine with the heavy soil setting on the hottest water setting the fabric allows.

Clothing Repair/Maintenance

Use Your Bedazzler – OK this may not be the best idea for repairing your clothes but I have always wanted to mention the Bedazzler in a blog post.

Depill Your Clothing – There are lint shavers you can get from a crafting retail store or you can just use the same razor you use in the bathroom to shave off pills on clothing. This is great for buying clothes at the thrift shops that others avoid because of pilling.

Straighten Collar on Shirt – So this one worked GREAT! Use a hair straightener to flatten out the collar on your shirts.

Sewing a Button – Sewing on a new button or fixing loose buttons is really easy. Wikihow has directions for new buttons both two and four hole.

Sew a Hem Without Sewing – Turns out those glue guns work great to fix a hem for those of us who are sewing challenged. You will want to air dry clothes that you use this idea on.

Fix a Loose Thread – Nicer clothes can sometimes pull a thread. And easy fix for this is to alternate pulling up and down and then left and right simultaneously.

Fix a Shrunken Shirt – I never shrink shirts, but that is because I am not allowed to do the laundry. So if you happen to put something in on the wrong setting, you can soak it in a mixture of warm water and hair conditioner for five minutes and then stretch it back to the original size.

Sweater Shedding – Put your sweaters in the freezer for five hours to prevent them from shedding. With any fabric that has long fibers (Alpaca, Angora, etc.) you can freeze them and then give it a good shake to get all the fibers that would normally collect on your other clothes to come out all at once.

Use Brooches – I will be honest, I didn’t really understand what a brooch was, except I was certain that old ladies use them frequently. Apparently you can use these magically little wonders to snazzy up just about anything. Shoes, shirts with small permanent stains, all sorts of stuff.

Marks on Leather – If you get a mark on your leather then you can use hand moisturizer, if you do not have shoe polish available, to massage out the mark. If it is suede shoes a fingernail file will do the trick.

Uncomfortable Underwire – This one makes me a little uncomfortable, but apparently underwire is a major discomfort for some women. You can fix the issue by cutting off a small piece of adhesive mole skin. People also use this on their feet to prevent rubbing.

Remove Odors from Clothing Hacks

Funky odors got you down.  You can get rid of most of them using these three hacks.

Arm Pit Odor – Lemon juice is your best bet to get rid of that manly scent coming from his shirts.

Sneaker Odor – Douse your teenagers sneakers with baking soda. The world will thank you.

General Clothing Odor – There are two great ways to get the odor out of clothes:

• Put them in the freezer to kill any odor causing bacteria
• Spritz them with a little bit of vodka. It has the same effect as the freezer but your shirt has a better chance of being the life of the party.

Shoes and Accessory Hacks

I had to research these a little more than some of the others. Apparently I do not accessorize very well. Maybe as my two little girls grow up I will be forced to step into the world of accessories and shoes more and more.

Widen your Shoes to Make Them More Comfortable – Women’s shoes are a mystery to me. How can you purchase new shoes in the right size and then they not fit? If you get a pair that are FABULOUS but are a little too tight then you have two options:

• Put on a pair of thick socks and then put the shoes on. Use a hair dryer to warm them up and help stretch them out.
• Fill up zip lock baggies with water and put them in the shoes (make sure there is enough water to fill the foot area). Put the shoes with the baggies in them in the freezer and let the water freeze. As the ice expands it will expand your shoes.

Distress Leather Yourself – Apparently the distressed leather look is not that hard to accomplish yourself. Doityourself.com breaks it down into five simple things.

Speed Up Drying of Hand Wash Items – If you have items that cannot be washed in a machine you can use a salad spinner to all the excess water out and then lay out for the final dry.

Replace your Hoodie String – I tried using a safety pin like I do with athletic shorts, but a straw worked much better.

Clean Patent Leather – Window cleaner will get the grime off your patent leather items.

Tears in Your Tights/Stockings – Clear Nail polish will stop a tear in your tights. You can used colored polish too but I think that might be a little conspicuous.

Button Falling Off – Clear nail polish comes to the rescue again with holding that button on until you can get home and put some thread into it.

Tighten Glasses – This rounds out the uses for clear nail polish. If the screw in your glasses is getting a little wobbly then clear nail polish will tighten it up until you get somewhere that you can use those tiny screw drivers.

Emergency Shoe Polish – If you’re stuck with shoes looking a little dull, rub them down with a banana peel and then wipe clean the residue. Then walk away with a shiny new look.

So put this as one more weapon in your arsenal of how to save money. If you get really good at this then you could also turn fixing clothes into a small side business by collecting clothes from your whole family, a consignment store, or secondhand shops, applying a quick fix, and reselling them for extra cash.

If you have any more simple hacks for saving money on clothing expenses leave them in the comments or hit me up on twitter @SavingFreak.