P.s I’m not gonna handwash. That’s too much
Try eating less 🧠
- no wool
- anticipate 3% shrinkage on new items
- front loader
- cold wash
- no fab softener
- line dry
Not OP but i just found an answer. Top loaders may have a center agitator which is there to … agitate more – which we don’t want to do.
Any machine that is without a center agitator will be more gentle on clothes and less likely to cause shrinking due to fiber damage and consolidation. If you have a top-loading washer with a center agitator, reduce its impact on your garments by opting for a gentle or hand-wash cycle.
(from the same link that i posted in another comment)
Front loaders are generally gentler on clothes because they only spin and don’t oscilate at all. Also they don’t have a spiny tube thingy in the middle.
Both washer and dryer can cause shrinkage, but the dryer will cause more. Also natural fabrics will shrink more (by far) than polyesters. To your comment “I’m not gonna handwash. That’s just too much.” Well no one can blame you for that. But it’s still true that the gentler you wash your clothes, the less shrinkage you’ll get. It’s a balancing act, how much effort you’re willing to put in vs how long you want your clothes to last.
Personally I’m a natural fabric addict, there is very little non-natural fabric in my wardrobe. And I also do hardly any hand washing, but not zero. I often use a gentle cycle on my wash machine (top loader, sadly). Any non hand-wash garments that I still want to protect go in a garment bag on the gentle cycle, and do NOT go into the dryer. The bulk of my wardrobe gets dried but on low heat, and pulled before it’s quite all the way dry, because a lot of shrinkage happens as the garment goes from barely dry to fully dry. In particular my knits get the low temp dryer, and also any clothes which I consider semi-delicate, particularly well loved or barely big enough.
Clothing shrink happens when fibers absorb water/warm up and the edges of their structure (cellulose strands in cotton, protein scales in wool) stand up more and become more likely to catch on their neighbors. When they do, the fibers lose their ability to move independently from each other. As this happens, more and more fibers catch, turning the agitation in your washer and dryer into a sort of ratchet that shrinks the dimensions of the fabric.
Cotton can be un-shrunk with constant pressure. Ever had 100% cotton jeans tighten up in the wash that feel great after a day of wearing them? They shrunk and then your body undid the shrink. Wool isn’t as forgiving - the aforementioned scales clamp down on each other when they cool and dry and are effectively impossible to get free from each other. Wool can be treated before it is knit or woven into cloth to prevent shrinking and make it safe for the wash. Treated wool usually has a trade name attached to it like Superwash or something similar.
Most of the time clothes shrink after being on high settings on the dryer. Check out the clothing tag and see if they are low tumble on delicate
