10 Cheap(ish) Laundry Aids to Help Your Clothes Look Better | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Zoe Vanderweide

Zoe Vanderweide is a writer focused on style and accessories. She has personally tested nearly 300 bags, jeans, bras, shoes, and more.

We’ve updated this guide and have new picks for laundry detergent, mesh laundry bags, and a garment steamer. We also demoted our previous fabric-shaver pick, the Homeasy Fabric Shaver, due to quality issues.

As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. All clothes wear out eventually (it’s inevitable), but armed with some simple, inexpensive supplies and a little know-how, you can keep beloved staples looking better, longer—and even breathe new life into tired duds.

Here’s a roundup of the best products for washing, drying, and maintaining your clothes, plus plenty of tips on how to use them most effectively. Everything in this guide has been exhaustively tested by Wirecutter’s laundry experts, and nothing costs an arm and a leg—proof that looking spiffy doesn’t have to be spendy.

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This all-purpose, no-rinse formula gently and effectively cleans a range of delicate garments without being too harsh.

This fragrance- and dye-free liquid was the most well-rounded liquid detergent we tested, tackling a variety of stains and odors well.

This no-rinse detergent softens and protects wool and cashmere items, but it isn’t the best choice for other fabrics.

The rinsing, spinning, and shimmying of machine agitation can lift textile fibers and leave fabrics pilled, fuzzy, or dull. We recommend that you hand-wash the clothes you treasure.

If you hand-wash a variety of delicate fabrics, a no-rinse detergent is the most versatile. Of the 14 hand-washing detergents we tested, our favorite was Soak. It’s widely available online (though it can be tricky to find in stores), and you can use it on a range of persnickety fabrics, from gauzy silks to cashmere to chunky wools. We particularly like the mild “celebration” fragrance, but Soak comes in an unscented formula, too.

Soak is a no-rinse detergent, which means that it doesn’t leave a soapy residue on clothing that has to be rinsed off. You put a teaspoon into a basin of cool to lukewarm water, let the garment soak, then gently press out the water and lay the garment flat to dry.

At first, it may feel odd to skip a rinse. But we’ve found that when we have fewer steps to complete, we’re more likely to actually bother with hand-washing the items that need extra care.

At around $20 for 12 ounces, Soak is a lot pricier than regular detergent. Luckily, a little goes a long way. One Wirecutter editor said that a single bottle, used weekly on a handful of items, lasted her almost a year.

It’s also worth noting that Soak is not specifically formulated for stain-fighting. Our favorite stain remover, Amodex Ink & Stain Remover, is safe to use on wool and some silks (though you should still test it out for colorfastness beforehand in a non-visible area).

If you’re only hand-washing wool, try a detergent with lanolin. The no-rinse Eucalan Delicate Wash cleans wool slightly better than Soak. It also contains softening and protective lanolin, a naturally occurring wax derived from sheep. Keep in mind that lanolin can attract dirt and grime to non-woolens, though, and it’s not vegan-friendly.

Regular detergent works just fine for lots of hand-washing needs. Surprise! Ordinary detergent, like Tide Free & Gentle Liquid Laundry Detergent—the top pick for liquid laundry detergent in our guide to the best laundry detergents—is actually mild enough for most fabrics, and it’s highly effective at getting out stains. Plus, unlike some formulas, this one doesn’t contain protease, an enzyme that digests protein fibers and has the potential to damage pure wool or silk.

Mesh laundry bags protect delicates from friction in the washing machine. This affordable set includes five bags made from sturdy mesh that doesn’t snag, with elastic zipper covers to keep them securely closed.

We get it: Nothing beats the ease of machine-washing. But if you’re going to subject vulnerable items like bras, swimsuits, and sweaters to that kind of commotion, then you’d better give them a layer of protection—which is where mesh laundry bags come in.

Mesh laundry bags are like armor for your delicates. The washing machine is the equivalent of a mosh pit for your clothes. A mesh bag keeps fussy fabrics from stretching, warping, or snagging on zippers, hooks, and—gasp!—Velcro in the unchecked melee. It also prevents straps from tangling, buttons from coming loose, and bra cups from collapsing beyond recognition.

A good mesh laundry bag is surprisingly hard to find. You’d think that getting quality zippered bags for your delicates would be pretty straightforward—but it’s surprisingly tricky to find ones that are up to snuff. After testing a bunch, we recommend the budget-friendly Bagail Mesh Laundry Bags, which proved sturdier and more secure than the (similarly priced) Muchfun and (exorbitantly priced) The Laundress options that we tried.

In our tests, the Bagail set’s rip-resistant polyester material kept clothing adequately shielded from the fray while still allowing soap and water to move freely in and out. The mesh weave is silky and fine, but surprisingly strong; after many washes over the course of five-plus months, they haven’t developed a single snag.

The zippers—usually the first thing to break on subpar mesh laundry bags—have a secure design. You can tuck them into snug elastic covers to prevent accidental unzipping. Even after being in near-constant use for months (believe me: I’ve been testing shapewear), their zippers still function smoothly.

Different-size bags offer options for whatever you might be washing. The Bagail laundry bag set includes five bags in three sizes: two small (12 by 16 inches), two medium (16 by 20 inches), and one large (24 by 24 inches). The small size fits a few pairs of underwear or wool socks, the medium is ideal for a couple of bras or a delicately embroidered top, and the large comfortably contains a chunky knit sweater. (In a pinch, you can also use them to organize a suitcase or off-season clothes.) At around $8 for all five, they’re the most affordable bags we tried.

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Hang wet clothes to protect them from shrinkage and wear in the dryer. This durable, accordion-style rack holds a surprising number of garments and folds compactly for storage.

This horizontal rack prevents knits from stretching and warping with gravity. Its secure mesh lets air flow around your garments for faster drying. It’s also easy to set up, stack multiples, and fold for storage.

Tumble-drying, especially at high temperatures, can be a real clothing killer. The heat and agitation stresses fabrics and causes natural fibers like cashmere, wool, and silk (as well as semi-synthetics like rayon) to shrink. Anything with stretch—bathing suits, leggings, stretchy jeans, and the like—won’t fare well in the dryer either, since heat causes elastane to break down. Some synthetics, such as polyester and nylon, can even melt at high enough temperatures.

For delicate items, as well as the favorite garments that you want to last longer, air-drying is best, and a well-designed drying rack will save you space and speed up the process.

Choose a rack according to your drying needs. Drying racks come in various shapes and configurations; you should pick yours based on the items that you plan on air-drying. Most clothes can be hang-dried, but some knits (like wool and cashmere sweaters) should be laid flat to dry. You’ll also want to consider the amount of space you have to dedicate to the job. Our recommendations have smaller spaces in mind; we didn’t consider more expansive options like gull-wing style racks, outdoor racks, or clotheslines.

Accordion-style racks work well if you dry all sorts of garments. Hang-drying is appropriate for most garments—from bras and socks to tees and blue jeans. They’re space-efficient and allow plenty of air to circulate around your clothes. An accordion-style rack—so-called because it folds like an accordion—is especially convenient because it has a small footprint and stores compactly while still providing plenty of drying space for a variety of items.

Our favorite accordion-style rack is a cheap ’n’ cheerful workhorse. In our testing, the Amazon Basics Foldable Laundry Rack held clothes more stably and folded more smoothly than others we tried, and at a lower price. Its durable steel construction held the weight of a damp bath towel, a pair of jeans, and several shirts on clothes hangers, without wobbling or buckling. (And over two years into testing, mine is still going strong.) With 11 rods, it offers an impressive amount of hanging space for its modest dimensions of 14.5 by 29.5 by 41.8 inches (LWH), and when folded, it’s only 4 inches tall, so it easily tucks under a bed or into a closet.

If you’re mostly drying sweaters, go with a flat drying rack. Sweaters and other heavier knits—especially those made from wool and cashmere—should always be laid flat to dry. (Hang-drying these items can cause their sensitive fibers to stretch, distorting the garment’s fit.) After washing, press out excess water by gently rolling sweaters, coats, and other heavy textiles in a towel, then lay them flat to dry.

The OXO Folding Sweater Dryer is easy to set up and collapse, and it can be stacked in multiples. In a pinch, you can spread your knit items out to dry on a fresh towel, but for much faster drying, we recommend the OXO Folding Sweater Dryer, a 26-by-26-by-4.5-inch plastic rack (LWH) with a flat mesh surface (sized for a single large sweater) that allows air to flow around all sides of the garment. It feels substantial and well made, and during testing, it didn’t sag under the weight of even my heaviest wool coat.

If you tend to air-dry a lot of knitwear at the same time, you can get more than one OXO rack; they’re designed to be stacked one on top of another, easily and securely. Since the mesh is taut on the frame, even heavy sweaters don’t droop onto wet garments on the layer below. At nearly $20 per rack, the cost of buying multiples does, ahem, stack up, but your precious cashmere (and other finest pieces) are worth investing in.

While the OXO rack is a bit of a floor space-hog when it’s assembled—the trade-off for a horizontal surface—the whole thing folds in half for storage (you just have to collapse the feet), making it a cinch to stash away. Other stacking racks we tried, like the Storage Maniac Sweater Drying Rack, were finicky to take down.

This midsize handheld steamer has five settings to handle different fabrics, and it relaxes wrinkles fast without spitting any water. It’s pleasant to use, but refilling the water tank is a bit tricky.

For around $60, a great garment steamer quickly relaxes wrinkles and freshens up delicate fabrics, replacing many costly trips to the dry cleaner. It’s gentler than an iron for smoothing silk, cashmere, and heat-sensitive synthetics, since it won’t scorch, warp, or crush delicate yarns, and our favorite garment steamer is powerful and versatile enough to work well on heftier fabrics, too. (For crisply pressed cotton or linen, an iron is still your best bet.)

A midsize handheld steamer makes sense for most people’s everyday needs. Garment steamers come in many shapes and sizes. We tested 22 contenders—from teensy 1-ouncers to jumbo gallon-tank models—for our guide to the best clothing steamers.

For moderate to regular household use, midsize handheld steamers, which usually hold about a cup of water, tend to offer the best balance of steaming power, tank capacity, portability, and convenience for most people. (But if your needs differ, we also recommend a compact model for travel or occasional use, and a pro-level standing steamer for full-scale steaming marathons.)

Our favorite Conair handheld steamer is powerful. During both vertical and horizontal use, the Conair Turbo ExtremeSteam Garment Steamer (GS59X) emitted forceful blasts of steam that erased wrinkles faster than any other handheld steamer we tested, without spitting water.

While it doesn’t have the largest capacity of the midsize models we tried, this steamer’s 7.3-ounce water tank is great for medium-size jobs. In testing, one tank produced more than 15 minutes of continuous steam—enough to get through a dress, a jacket, a pair of slacks, and three cotton button-downs, with water to spare.

It’s versatile. It also offers more dispensing control than other handheld models, with five steam settings to choose from. On its lowest setting, the Conair steamer freshens up the lightest, most delicate silks; at full steam, it melts heavy wrinkles with ease. It has a heat-up ceramic sole plate that glides smoothly (like an iron) over hardier fabrics such as cotton and linen, and an included spacer attachment provides extra snag protection when de-wrinkling embellished pieces.

It’s comfortable to hold (for a midsize steamer). Weighing 2.75 pounds when filled, the Conair steamer is on the lighter side for a midsize handheld steamer. Its modest weight, ergonomic design, and efficient performance make it easier to operate than other handheld models we tried. Even so, as with any handheld steamer, using it for longer stretches can feel like a serious arm workout.

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This rechargeable fabric shaver quickly and effectively eliminates pesky pills. Plus, it has a comfortable grip and easy-to-empty lint trap, and it’s covered by a one-year warranty.

When it comes to de-fuzzing delicate natural fibers, a manual tool is the way to go. This luxurious (but pricey) metal sweater comb was the best one we tried—it gently lifted pills from our cashmere sweaters.

All knitwear pills. The good news: Just because your favorite pullover is lousy with fuzzballs doesn’t mean that it’s reached the end of its life. A good fabric shaver or cashmere comb can restore even the most fluff-stippled sweater to its former glory.

For hardier fabrics and bigger jobs, an electric fabric shaver is your best bet. A fabric shaver is a ruthlessly efficient tool, cutting through fuzzies with a set of high-speed rotating blades. (Your garments—and digits—are shielded from the sharpness by a perforated hood.) It’s such a satisfying device to use that it’s easy to get a little carried away.

To prevent snags or snips, go slowly, and always work on a flat surface while holding the fabric taut. (I speak from experience when I say that shaving a sweater while you’re wearing it, no matter how tempting, is a bad idea.) Warning: An electric shaver can sometimes create rips and holes in delicate fabrics. (For example, I ripped a gossamer-thin bra with a fabric shaver. I also used one on a pair of merino wool tights, which miraculously survived, but … don’t try this at home.)

It’s safest to reserve this gadget for thicker, more durable synthetic materials. Leggings are especially prone to pilling, and this tool worked wonders to make the worn inner-thigh area on one Wirecutter editor’s old pair look nearly new.

Our favorite fabric shaver de-pills in minutes. The Conair Rechargeable Fabric Shaver is the most effective, reliable, and user-friendly pill-buster we’ve used. In testing, its three sharp blades and 2-inch wide head made quick work of larger fields of fuzzballs, and its three settings allowed us to use it on both fine and chunky knits without making any snags.

Compared with other fabric shavers we tested, the Conair Rechargeable Fabric Shaver has a comfier, more ergonomic grip, and it can be used unplugged or plugged-in, if you realize you need it when it’s out of juice. The detachable lint trap, located in the handle of the device, is also easier to empty than the lint traps on most fabric shavers, and it doesn’t require you to make contact with the blades. The Conair model is covered by a limited one-year warranty (PDF).

When it comes to your most delicate knits, reach for a manual sweater comb. For delicate wool and cashmere, a sweater comb is safer than an electric fabric shaver. This old-school tool typically has a plastic or wooden handle with fine metal or mesh teeth attached to it, for picking up fuzz. To use, lay your garment flat, pull the fabric taut, and gently glide the comb over the pilled surface.

The best cashmere comb we’ve come across is the Naadam Cashmere Comb. This comb was gentler and more effective at lifting pills than the competition. It has a nice, generous width (4 inches wide, compared with the 3-inch-wide Comfy Clothiers comb we tested), making it easier to hold and more efficient with each swipe.

Unlike some of the other models we tried, the Naadam comb holds onto the pills it has just removed, so you won’t be left with large shoals of shorn fuzz after you’re done combing. You will want to remove the fluff balls from the teeth of this comb as you work to keep it moving smoothly, but they come out easily thanks to the comb’s well-spaced mesh tines.

Our favorite sweater comb is a splurge that sparks joy. Although the Naadam comb costs more than the other combs we tested, it’s a worthwhile upgrade: Not only is it effective, but it looks more refined than the competition, with a solid cedar handle and neatly attached black metal mesh.

This might sound silly, but the elegance of this tool elevates the experience of using it; you might be inspired to reach for it more often and enjoy caring for your favorite sweaters a bit more. We tested a nearly identical comb from Quince, which wasn’t as nicely constructed; we noticed visible blobs of dried glue where the mesh met the wood. We’d rather spend $5 more and treat ourselves to the sturdier, more attractive comb from Naadam, particularly since it’s something we plan to buy only once.

Steer clear of sweater stones. As a possible alternative to sweater combs, we tested two sweater stones from Dritz and The Laundress. Made from ultra-porous natural pumice, a sweater stone is designed to collect fuzz as you brush it across a pilled fabric.

Unfortunately, neither stone rocked our world. They both shed pumice flakes and smelled sulfuric, and ultimately they didn’t accomplish much. In our experience, a sweater comb does a better job with less mess.

This lint roller’s sticky paper picks up lint, hair, and dust with just a few swipes. It was the least expensive and most effective roller we tried—but we don’t like that the refills for it cost as much as the roller.

When you’re looking to refresh tired clothes, it doesn’t get much quicker or simpler than a tape lint roller. This sticky cylinder can lift errant hairs, dust, and fuzz with a few satisfying passes.

Not all lint removers are created equal. Lint rollers come in a few varieties. In our testing, we found that the tape-style rollers—that is, the ones with sticky, tear-off sheets—were more effective on clothing than reusable microfiber brushes (better for pet hair on upholstery) or metal and wood comb-style tools (great for carpets but shred garments). Sticky tape lint rollers are the gentlest choice for delicate fabrics, since you don’t need to apply as much pressure to lift up lint and other debris.

Our favorite lint roller is affordable—and a pleasure to use. The Scotch-Brite Lint Roller ticks all the boxes: It provides smooth rolling action (no jagging or skipping), and its perforated sheets are supremely tacky and easy to tear. It handily outperformed the sleek-looking Flint lint roller, which underwhelmed us with weak adhesive and shabby sheet perforations.

At around $5 for a roll of 95 sheets, the Scotch-Brite Lint Roller is the cheapest tape lint remover we tried. You can get plenty of mileage out of a single roll—about two sheets is enough to spiff up an entire outfit. The only bummer is that refills for this roller are oddly overpriced. In our experience, it’s usually cheaper to buy a multipack of entirely new rollers than it is to buy refill heads.

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I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering style and accessories, and I have authored our guides to the best clothing steamers, bras, and women’s underwear, among others. Along the way, I’ve consulted with textile experts, conducted weird laundry experiments, and cleaned, steamed, and freshened countless garments. De-fuzzing fabrics is one of my great passions.

For this guide:

The objective of this guide is simple: to create a roundup of the very best inexpensive laundry tools and aids, along with some great advice on how to use them.

We polled our Wirecutter colleagues for recommendations, interviewed experts, trawled the Internet for fan favorites, and drew on our own combined decades of experience in the laundry room, then set about putting the products through their paces. (Some of the picks in this guide—like the laundry detergents and clothing steamers—have Wirecutter guides of their own and were already backed by exhaustive testing.

For each recommendation, we considered whether the product is a good buy—not necessarily the cheapest out there, but a solid value for what it is. We also evaluated it based on the criteria specific to its category.

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The Honey-Can-Do DRY-03053 Expandable Drying Rack is similar to our Amazon Basics Foldable Laundry Rack pick in form and function, except it’s twice as expensive and felt slightly less sturdy.

The Storage Maniac Sweater Drying Rack looks similar to our OXO Folding Sweater Dryer pick—and, at about $40 for a set of four, it’s about half the price. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to disassemble and fold for storage than our pick, and it feels wobbly.

We tried two hanging sweater racks—the Snomel 3-Tier Folding Clothes Drying Rack and the Jy Living Large Folding Laundry Drying Rack—and we didn’t love either of them. They need a place to hang from, so if you don’t have a shower-curtain rod, they’re not particularly convenient. (And unless your bathroom has a window for ventilation, it’s not an ideal setting for drying laundry anyway.) Plus, both were maddeningly hard to fold for storage.

The ColdSky Rechargeable Fabric Shaver looked promising on paper: It has six blades and a convenient digital display, and it costs less than $10. In practice, it disappointed: It was loud, the battery quickly ran out of charge, and when the shaver was on its highest setting, it produced a disturbing smell of overheated metal.

The Homeasy Fabric Shaver—a sleek, six-blade rechargeable shaver with three settings and a digital display—was previously a much-beloved pick. (And my own test model continues to function beautifully.) But over time, problems have emerged. One Wirecutter editor said that, after less than a year, the battery on her Homeasy shaver stopped charging; another said that the blades on hers began to malfunction after about nine months. These issues, combined with the company’s lack of available customer service, mean that we can no longer recommend this product with confidence.

The Nori Trim is an attractive and effective six-bladed rechargeable fabric shaver that comes with two handy replacement blades. It worked just as well as our Conair Rechargeable Fabric Shaver pick, with a lint trap that’s similarly easy to empty. But it has only one intensity setting, and we simply couldn’t justify its cost—at around $60, it’s twice as pricey as the Conair shaver.

Unlike the other rechargeable electric de-fuzzers we tested, the Beautural Fabric Shaver and Lint Remover is battery-operated. Not only was it less powerful than the rechargeable models, but we noticed that its performance declined markedly as the battery life wore out.

The Dritz Sweater Comb and Comfy Clothiers Cedar Wood Sweater Comb were more difficult to use than our Naadam Cashmere Comb pick. These inferior combs have finer teeth than the Naadam model, forcing you to press harder to remove pills (increasing the likelihood of snagging your garment). They’re also somewhat narrower, so it takes longer to cover the same amount of surface area. And the Dritz comb in particular, with its cheap plastic build, felt less sturdy and refined.

The Quince Cashmere Comb is virtually identical to our Naadam sweater-comb pick—same materials, same dimensions—except it’s not as well made. Our Quince comb arrived with visible blobs of dried glue where the metal mesh attaches to the wooden handle, and the mesh itself was a little uneven. While this didn’t affect its performance in our tests, it made it less appealing to use—and it could impact its durability over time. Still, if you’re looking for a less expensive alternative to the Naadam comb, this is a decent option.

We tried two virtually indistinguishable sweater stones, The Laundress Sweater Stone and the Dritz Clothing Care Sweater Stone, but we don’t recommend either. Both shed flakes of pumice onto our knits, smelled sulfuric, and failed at their primary mission of de-fuzzing.

The Insta-ready Flint lint roller comes in a rainbow of hues and certainly looks cute. Alas, its allure lies in branding and aesthetics more than actual performance. The Flint roller’s adhesive is weak compared with the sticky sheets of our pick, the Scotch-Brite Lint Roller, and we found its sheet perforations frustratingly difficult to tear.

We wanted to like reusable lint-lifters. Though they’re more expensive than disposable rollers, you don’t need to buy refills (or add more paper to landfills). Unfortunately, the OXO Good Grips Furlifter—which OXO suggests mainly for removing pet hair, rather than lint—was far less effective than the sticky rollers we tried.

Of all the tools we tested for this guide, the LintRolled Lint Cleaner Pro was the one that caused the most damage. Even when we used a light touch, it immediately snagged and frayed a linty sweatshirt.

This article was edited by Ingela Ratledge Amundson and Jennifer Hunter. Dorie Chevlen wrote an earlier version of this article.

Patric Richardson, textile-care expert and author of “Laundry Love”, email interview, February 9-10, 2022, and October 18-19, 2022

Madeline Miller, product specialist at The Laundress, email interview, March 3, 2022

Zoe Vanderweide

Zoe Vanderweide is a senior staff writer reporting on style and accessories at Wirecutter. She has been wearing things for over three decades, and she has spent years covering streetwear, luxury, art, and design. Off the clock, you can find her painting the town rainbow with her (devastatingly stylish) daughter.

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