Contrary to popular belief, washing your clothes isn’t enough to remove pet hair from your clothes. Dog or cat hair that gets washed with your clothes tends to either stay with your clothes or get stuck to the sides of the washer drum, ready to stick to the next load. Discover tricks for how to get dog hair out of the laundry and avoid dealing with pet hair on your newly cleaned clothes.
Despite the best efforts of pet owners, sometimes it seems impossible to rid ourselves of our pet’s excess hair completely. Even a brief brush against your leg leaves your pants covered in loose hair from your pet’s fur.
If you’re tossing hair-covered clothes into the washer without a second thought, you’re not addressing the problem. Complete a few simple tasks before doing laundry to help get dog fur out of clothes, and it’ll change the way you handle pet dander. Follow the tips in this article to eliminate loose pet hair from your laundry.
How to Get Pet Hair Out of the Laundry
Because unwanted pet hair is not an uncommon occurrence, there are many items designed to be used with your washing machine or dryer to reduce the appearance of stray hairs. We’ve included a few of those items and some tricks you may not have thought of to help tackle this problem.
Pet urine is another story. Even if you use a homemade spray for dogs not to pee on your clothes or in other areas, it sometimes happens anyway. Thankfully, removing pet hair is a little easier and less time consuming than pee smell.
How to Get Dog Hair Out of the Laundry with Anti Static Spray
The reason pet hair sticks to us isn’t just due to inconvenience. Electron charges are all around us, and your pets are no exception. When we rub against our dog, the charge of their fur causes loose fur to stick to us.
One way to get pet hair out of the laundry is with an anti-static spray, which weakens the charges and makes it harder for pet hair to stick to your clothes.
Spray it after taking your clothes out of the laundry to avoid collecting hair before they get hung, or apply the spray before your clothes go into the dryer to make hair removal easier.
Use Lint and Hair Catching Tools
Many commercial items are available for purchase for removing hair and lint from your clothes, and which one you pick depends on need and preference. Use these suggestions before washing your clothes to limit the hair in your washer or dry your clothes to remove lingering hairs.
Lint Roller
Before you toss your clothes in for a wash cycle, get off as much hair as possible. For darker clothes, it might be easier to see pet dander, but you might not know how much loose hair is clinging to your beige sweater or your favorite white shirt.
Use a lint roller before you wash your clothes to remove hair to avoid cleaning it out of your washer later.
Lint rollers all perform the same primary function as a roll of adhesive tape wrapped around a handle. As you gather more hair from your laundry, rip off the strip and continue rolling until you remove most of the hair.
Use your lint roller to get pet hair off the couch and your favorite recliner, too. If you have animals, keeping a lint roller on hand is a good idea.
Non-Sticky Lint Brush
Like a lint roller, lint brushes are a pad of fabric used to gather and pull loose hair from fabric. The pads are usually small; however, they are easy to clean.
Give your clothes a once-over after coming out of the dryer, when the fabric and hairs are loose, and wipe off as much hair as you can. Because a lint brush does not have added adhesive, it may be less effective at pulling hair stuck in the fabric out when compared to a lint roller.
Clean Your Pet’s Bed or Covering
If you have a designated bed for your shedding pet or use covers on your furniture to contain their hair, wash these items as well. If you add these items to the laundry after your pet uses them, you’re likely only adding to the collection of hair in your washer.
Although adding liquid fabric softener does help with removing hair, there is not a pet-specific laundry detergent to get rid of clingy hair.
Before washing your pet’s bed or the couch cover, quickly clean it by vacuuming with an attachment designed for hair like the small rubber broom extension.
Removing hair from these items not only makes your home smell better, but it also lessens the amount of hair you attract on your clothes if you’re sitting on the same couch with your dog.
Using a Rubber Glove to Remove Dog Hair from the Laundry
Rubber gloves, the kind humans use for cleaning, are great to get pet hair out of the laundry. The rubber on the gloves gathers and pulls hair from fabric.
Before doing a load of laundry, rub your gloved hands across your clothes to pull away any loose dog fur. You can also use these gloves to clean the inside of your dryer and lint trap to remove loose fur that gatherers in your machines.
Remove Dog Hair from the Laundry by Drying First
If you’ve ever had a wrinkly shirt or needed to remove lint or hair from your clothes before putting them on, you know that a quick tumble in the dryer works wonders. If your clothing is just a little unfresh, wash clothes without washer by using the dryer and a dryer sheet.
This same process applies when trying to remove dog hair from your clothes. Set your dryer to tumble, and add dryer supplies to help remove dog hair from the laundry.
By using items in the dryer designed to remove pet hair, you can lessen the amount of hair on your clothes when they finally end up in the washing machine. Getting pet hair out of clothes, especially if there’s a lot, is much easier using the dryer. Placing a wet cloth in the dryer helps hair stick to it versus attaching to your tumbling clothes, and it can easily be shaken out and reused for the next cycle.
Dry Clothes with a Dryer Ball
The tumbling motion your dryer makes causes static electricity to build inside. Dryer balls reduce the static cling and also repel hair from your clothes, which allows hair and lint to become caught in the dryers lint trap.
To help remove as much loose hair as possible, toss a couple of wool dryer balls in your laundry. Run the dryer on a tumble cycle, no heat required, to allow the pet hair to loosen from your clothes.
After taking your clothes from the dryer, shake them out to remove extra hair, and place your clothes in the washing machine as usual.
Use Dryer Sheets to Gather Hair
Dryer sheets are multi-functional when it comes to laundry and pet hair. When drying wet clothes, dryer sheets reduce the static cling in the dryer and disperse fabric softener to soften the fabrics.
These properties work the same when used on already dry clothes. Toss a dryer sheet in with your load of laundry to reduce the amount of pet hair on your clothes. Because you are using your dryer more often than usual, check and empty your lint filter in the clothes dryer to keep it free of buildup.
How to Clean Your Washer
If you’re used to throwing your hair-covered clothes in the washing machine and aren’t seeing any improvement from when you remove the clothes, it’s likely time to clean the inside of your dryer. Because your dryer is wet during use and gets closed off from air circulation, it’s difficult for pet hair to make its way out.
After finishing your laundry, leave the door to your washer open to allow it to dry out. Use a long vacuum attachment to gather any hair from the inside, then wipe down the walls of your washer drum before using a cleaning solution to clean the inside of the machine.
Combine the ingredients or pour them in one at a time directly into your washing machine. Close the lid and let your machine run through a rinse cycle to clean and freshen your washer from pet odors.
Deep Cleaning the Lint Trap
Unlike the washing machine, your dryer does have a specific area dedicated to gathering lint and hair. Cleaning the lint trap is critical because a clogged trap may lead to fires in the home.
When using your dryer to remove pet hair, deep clean the filter as hair does not always clump together like lint. Use the thin crevice attachment for your vacuum to clean deep the lint trap to remove hair that may not have gathered in the filter and is in the machine itself.
Knowing how to remove pet hair from your laundry isn’t hard work, but it may require regular maintenance if your pet sheds often. By following our suggestions, we hope you successfully manage the excess pet hair in your laundry cycles.
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