Recipes

The Best Way to Hand-Wash Your Clothes

Words by Micaela Hoo

Photography by Santiago de Hoyos

I love smelling nice (who doesn’t?), but I don’t love the heavy feeling of wearing perfume. So one of my latest smell-good hacks is to hand-wash my favourite items of clothing with soap and a dreamy blend of essential oils. My current mix of choice is Sweet Orange, Lavender, and Ylang Ylang. Citrus is a natural disinfectant, too!

 

AROMATIC CLOTHES WASH

Sink full of cold water

1/2 cap liquid laundry soap

4 drops Sweet Orange Essential Oil

4 drops Lavender Essential Oil

3 drops Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

How to use it

  1. Fill up a sink with cold water and soap.
  2. Add the essential oils and stir the water around to make sure the oils are fully incorporated and won’t leave marks on your garments.
  3. One by one (or you can double up if the garments don’t take up much space), soak the clothes in the mixture, making kneading motions with your hands to make sure each item is thoroughly cleaned. As with machine washing, always separate your lights from darks.
  4. Rinse off each item of clothing with fresh cold water.
  5. Ring the pieces out and hang them to dry. Make sure you have a towel on the floor to catch the dribbles.

This is such a simple act of self-care. I swear you’ll be smelling yourself (in a good way!) all day long.