Helpful tips to extend the life of your clothes

Mesh laundry bags are the infinitely packable, infinitely washable, infinitely versatile alternative to plastic zip-close bags. When you want to clean or corral small objects without creating an air-tight seal, a mesh bag in the tool you need. Once you start using mesh bags to help you sort, manage, and protect your laundry, you’ll wonder how you managed without them — but it’s their off-label uses that will truly tickle your productivity bone.

1. Choose the right size mesh bag for your needs. A laundry bag is usually roomy enough to stash a week’s worth of dirty laundry. A lingerie bag, on the other hand, is a smaller bag made specifically for washing a few delicate items.Sports and equipment bags tend to be quite large, but you’ll find a variety of sizes and colors.
2. Use lingerie bags routinely for lingerie to avoid stretched straps, snags, and damaging other clothing with hungry bra hooks. Clip a lingerie bag on or next to the laundry hamper so you can tuck things directly into the bag as you take them off.
3. Solve the mystery of disappearing socks.Left on their own, socks and other small items can float to the top and work their way out of the washer tub and into the pump. Besides the annoyance of the disappearing act, this nasty trick can plug the pump and flood your laundry room.
4. Machine wash with confidence. Tucking sweaters and other hand wash items into a mesh bag cuts down on friction and stretching. You’ll find you can safely machine wash many hand washables and even some clothes recommending dry cleaning if you use a mesh bag and the delicate cycle.
5. Bundle baby clothes. Protect your tiniest garments by grouping them up in a mesh laundry bag.
6. Eliminate sock and underwear sorting. Give individual bags to each member of the household, and have them put dirty socks and underwear directly into the bag. No more matching and sorting, ever again! Label names with permanent marker (check for a tag inside the bag) or buy mesh sport or equipment bags in various colors.
7. Avoid bags with drawstring closures.Drawstrings often come undone and become hopelessly tangled with other laundry and your washing machine agitator. Try using bags that are large enough to simply knot the entire end.
8. Don’t overfill mesh bags. More than two-thirds full and there won’t be enough space for the items inside to wash, rinse, and dry thoroughly.
9. Use a mesh bag for stuffed animals and toys. A mesh bag (and possible another item or three) protects plushies from excess friction, stretching, and tangling with other items in the wash.
10. Hang it up. If your bag doesn’t have a drawstring, you can hang it easily using aclothespin with a clothes hanger hook on it.
11. Keep lingerie bag zippers closed with a small safety pin.
12. Stick a mesh bag to the bathtub wall with suction cups to drain and store children’s tub toys.
13. Use a mesh bag when you’re campingfor lightweight dish storage and to hang clean dishes up to dry.
14. Small, zippered lingerie bags make short work of organizing extra clothing and fresh diapers in a diaper bag.
15. Corral all the little things you want to wash in the top rack of the dishwasher: children’s toys, hairbrushes, drinking straws, Legos, medicine dose cups, small utensils.
16. Drain and store beach toys in a big mesh laundry or sports bag.