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We've all been there. The season's change and you pull out your favorite sweater from your winter stash only to see a bunch of bobbles and fuzz clinging to your once gorgeous garment. Pilling on clothes is so annoying. Not only does it make your clothes look old and musty but it also reduces the life cycle of your togs and means that you have to invest time to remove pills and get your clothes fuzz-free. As they say, prevention is better than a cure, so we are going to share tips on how to prevent clothes from pilling (and how to save those garments that have already gone to the fuzz gods).
What Causes Pilling Fabric?
So why do pills form on clothes? The simple answer is that pills tend to form on the parts of your clothes or linen or any fabric where abrasion happens. This can be around the thighs, underarms, on cuffs, and in the center of your bed linen. Linting, pilling, fuzzing - it all breaks down to being broken fibers that get pulled from your clothes and then caught up again when your clothes go through the washing machine or the tumble dryer.
Some fabrics are more prone to pilling than others. Synthetic fabrics are the worst culprit when it comes to pilling as a polyester surface is more likely to build up a higher negative electrical charge when rubbed. This means it becomes a magnet for anything and everything floating around your washing machine or clothes dryer.
Once the lint and little fuzz balls are attracted to your fabrics, they get tangled up in the fibers of your clothes and turn into those annoying little lint balls and fabric pills. We all now know that synthetics suck when it comes to keeping your lint count low, but what exact fabrics out there are making life hard for us?