Turn your shirt inside out before putting it in the machine.
Set the machine to cold water, delicate/gentle cycle.
The picture you posted is of a dry, hot desert, right? What do you think a machine called a dryer that uses heat will do? Hang them to dry on a cheap rack from Amazon or your shower curtain rod instead.
I have shirts that still look practically new after dozens and dozens of washes.
We hang dry most of my wife’s stuff because it’s more delicate, hand made garments and such, but even that takes up two of those foldable hanging rack things. If we did all mine too we’d have no room to walk in our apartment. Just another way it costs more to be poor.
I wash all my band shirts in a washing machine at 40C with only color detergent and no fabric softener. I hang dry the tshirts on hangers instead of folding them over the clothes line or using clothes pins. Absolutely no dryer outside of whatever the washing machine does.
It works pretty well. The real secret is to have about 30 of them so you don't wash them every week.
Edit: like another commenter said, wash your clothes inside out.
IIRC: To prevent this from happening or slowing down the occurrence, turn your shirt inside out before you put it in the washing machine and dryer. Set both to the lowest or second lowest temperature for both machines. Works well for me. But as others have said, air drying is the best way to treat them. Me on the other hand...
Hmm, this is kinda funny to me, where I live we usually don't have or don't use dryers, we have "ropes" where we hang all the clothes, laundry is usually done at weekends and the clothes can stay there all day if needed (which most likely don't).
I mean, we have a freaking imponent sun right now, we better use it (36 Celsius right now).
For clothes I have 2 rules: 1) If the zipper is not made by YKK, fuck it I don't need that article 2) I never buy cheap screen printed fabric t shirts. DTG on cotton all the way.
You can feel it. The DTG print is very flexible, it feels like the fibre just has another color. The screen print feels like a sheet of rubber that was attached to the shirt.
I've had a couple of t shirts through the years where the fabric itself seems to have been dyed into an image instead of just being screen printed on. I get it obviously must be more expensive, but it holds up amazingly and I wish more places out there did this.
There is slave labor at aome point in pretty much every product you use. The cotton used for your shirt, the cocoa in your chocolate bar, the strawberry you had in your salad today, all likely had forced labor to some degree. Even the cartoon you watched last night might have been animated bu some korean child.
The fact that anyone is using anything higher than low for their clothes is shocking. If your clothes aren’t drying, it means you need to split the load into 2 separate ones, people!
almost all of those cheap iron on thick ass layered prints do this. they grate your skin then dissolve off the shirt. I've taught my 9 year old how to pick out good graphic tees, no shitty iron on mass produced trash.
Tagless labels disappearing isn’t ideal. It's a bummer that clothing has been produced so cheaply over the last some years that now much of it, which is donated overseas, ends up not being worth repairing and/or reselling.
Yep this is the cheapest printing method that basically stamps hot plastic into the shirt fabric. Any self respecting brand these days pays the .30 more per shirt to have them screen printed instead of vinyl or DTG printed
I swear live nation and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to keep shitty vinyl press shops in business
I wish more places just dyed the fabric. I have some shirts that are 10+ years old and look exactly like the day I bought them and they all are graphic tees with the image dyed into the shirt itself. The ones I have with a plastic-y decoration on the front, even if I take all the special precautions that other posters mention in the thread, will inevitably crack and wear out over time.
My problem is I want to get a custom design printed, and a lot of places will advertise that they screen print, but if you go to their website and create a custom design you find that they either won't do less than X number of shirts as a minimum order, or they will just vinyl print it anyway and send you that for $35 and it will fall apart almost instantly.
Some of the worst shirts I've seen, both fabric quality wise and print wise, have been at concerts for my favorite bands. Some of the best as well. If you want something guaranteed to last a long time you have to pay for expensive custom made designs. But then again, this defeats the purpose of directly supporting your favorites with the extra merchandize.
Its like being a billboard but instead you paid the company a days worth of your labor for the right to advertise on behalf of them while they're paying others for that same service.
Personally I have only a hand full of t-shirts, all made of good 100 percent wool. I rotate them in use and I get maybe two weeks of time each before I have to wash them again because wool is not getting stenchy very fast, is anti bacterial and has a good climate while wearing, be it cold or hot weather. They get washed inside out and with pretty cold water, which is good for the fabric, and dry on air, because that's energy efficient and also good for the fabric. I have them for like two years now and they look brand new, no pilling, no tears, no nothing. The wool flows and gleams like at the first day. Just. Do. Not. Buy. Trash.