Accidentally Shrunk Your Clothes In The Laundry? There Is A Way To Unshrink Them

If it weren’t necessary for living in polite society, nobody would do laundry. It’s insanely labor-intensive without modern technology, the instructions are basically written in code, and worst of all, if you do it wrong, you can end up shrinking your favorite shirt or pants into a child’s size version of their original design.

But what if we told you there was a way to unshrink those clothes? And by “we”, we mean Nisa Salim, who, as Director of the Swinburne-CSIRO National Testlab for Composite Additive Manufacturing at Swinburne University of Technology, is actually a bona fide expert in these things.

“Understanding more about the science of textile fibres can not only help you prevent the shrinkage of clothing, but also might help you ‘rescue’ the occasional garment after a laundry accident,” she wrote in a recent article for The Conversation.

While you “can’t completely reverse extreme shrinkage” Salim cautioned, her advice “can help recover some of the lost size, making the clothes wearable again.”

So, what should we do? Well, the first thing to know is why your shrinkage has happened. In cellulose-based fabrics – ones that come from plants, like cotton or linen – it’s a case of “fiber memory” being activated. See, before these plants are harvested and processed, their fibers are “irregular and crinkled,” Salim explained. “If you zoom deeper inside them, you’ll see millions of tiny, long-chain cellulose molecules that naturally exist in coiled or convoluted shapes,” she wrote.

The fibers are straightened out and arranged all nice and regularly before they’re made into garments – but when exposed to heat, moisture, or getting jostled around too much, they have a tendency to revert back to their original state.

“During laundering, hot water helps to increase the energy level of fibers – this means they shake more rapidly which disrupts the hydrogen bonds holding them in place,” Salim explained. 

“Additionally, cellulose is hydrophilic – it attracts water. Water molecules penetrate inside the fibers, causing swelling and making them more flexible and mobile,” she continued. “Adding to all this is the tumble and twist action inside the washing machine.”

“The whole process makes the fibers relax and recoil back to their natural, less stretched, crinkled state. As a result, the garment shrinks.”

Other fibers are affected in different ways. Wool, for example, is technically a kind of hair: it’s made of keratin, with a surface covered in tiny, overlapping scales called cuticle cells. “During washing, these cuticles open up and interlock with neighboring fibers causing fiber entanglement or ‘felting’,” Salim explained. “This makes the clothing feel denser and smaller – in other words, it shrinks.”

But it’s this hair connection that actually contains the answer to your shrinkage woes. To unshrink a tiny-fied garment, Salim advised, you should “gently soak the item in lukewarm water mixed with hair conditioner or baby shampoo (approximately one tablespoon per liter).” 

“Then, carefully stretch the fabric back into shape and dry it flat or under gentle tension,” she added – “for example, by pegging the garment to a drying rack.”

It works, she explained, because conditioner contains things called cationic surfactants – chemical compounds that decrease the surface tension between a liquid and some other substance. They have a whole bunch of uses, appearing everywhere from detergents to perfumes to goshdarn mayonnaise – but in conditioners, they work by bonding to your hair shaft magnet-style, leaving it smooth and slippery.

And it’s this same principle that should help unshrink your clothes, Salim explained. With the extra lubrication and reduced friction, they should be more amenable to leaving their washed and tangled state – meaning you can gently pull the garment back into its original size and shape.

So, there you have it: with a little conditioner, you should be able to reverse the shrinking process, at least a bit. Though next time, maybe read the instructions a little more carefully, okay?