THE hardest part of owning a pet is also the softest part: their fur.
Your cat or dog loves cuddling with you, and that's how their hair ends up stuck to your clothes and clogging your washing machine and dryer.
If you forget to do a pass with the lint roller before you pop your clothes in the laundry, don't worry. You can remove pet hair from your washing machine with minimal effort.
According to the home experts at Lifehacker, one of the easiest ways to eliminate fur from your laundry room is to clean both machines.
Start by washing out your washing machine. Dump a half-cup of white vinegar into the empty drum and run a normal cycle.
Then, once it's complete, wipe away the interior of the drum with a clean, lint-free cloth. You can use a similar cloth to clean your dryer –microfiber is especially effective.
"In addition to cleaning out the lint trap after every load, take a minute to wipe down the drum of the dryer using a damp, lint-free cloth to get rid of any hair in there," the experts at Lifehacker wrote.
If there's pet fur on your clothes before you wash them, you can keep the hair from building up in your machine – or becoming embedded in clothing fibers – with a few hacks.
For one thing, you can try a sneaky reversal: run your clothes through the dryer before washing them.
"The idea here is to loosen the pet hair on the fabric so it ends up in the lint trap," the experts explained. "It only needs to tumble for about 10 minutes on a low-heat or no-heat setting."
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Add a damp rag or a set of wool dryer balls to the load if you need heavy-duty fur removal.
Dryer balls or dryer sheets are an anti-static tool that works well to clear out additional fur with every load of laundry.
You can just add the dryer sheets to your laundry when you dry the clothes, but you can also use them to wipe down the inside of the dryer.
"Their antistatic properties help pull pet hair off the fabric and into the lint trap," the pros wrote.
"Though any dryer sheet will work, you can also opt to purchase ones specifically made for removing pet hair and lint, which tend to be around the same price."
Wool dryer balls or tennis balls are other alternatives that take little effort to use but can unstick fur like magic.
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"They increase airflow in the dryer, which also helps remove fur from your laundry," the experts wrote. If you're sensitive to scents, wool balls are the way to go.
Give your machines a good scrubbing, then serve up the dry-wash-dry "sandwich" with anti-static dryer sheets or wool balls on the side, and no one will know you even have pets.
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