#The laundry guy patric richardson book how to#
#The laundry guy patric richardson book series#

Never blot a stain, especially on upholstery or rugs. So what are his must-have tools of the trade? Vinegar, vodka, oxygen bleach, mild soap and a horsehair brush. The abrasion in the dryer will ruin your clothes.” “I treat the stain and then I wash.”ĭryer versus hang-drying: “Hang dry everything. … You’d be surprised how much less water you use and how much less energy.” Express on warm is so much better for your clothes than cold with a long cycle. If you bring up the water temperature you can shorten the cycle. The thing that is scariest about the washing machine isn’t the water, it’s the abrasion. Warm is warm enough to activate the detergent, but it allows you to speed up the process.

Water temperature: “Never use cold, even on silk or wool. If you want to wash it by hand that’s fine, but I recommend putting it in a mesh laundry/lingerie bag from the dollar store and throwing it in the washer on warm water.” (Snail’s teeth from the European limpet snails are the strongest natural material in the world, he reveals.) It’s very durable, that’s why they make parachutes from it.

“Silk is the second strongest fabric known to man. Same with sheep farmers will shear them and wash the wool, comb it. Silk and wool: “Cashmere goats stand on mountainsides in the snow and the rain. When asked, Richardson is happy to debunk some of the most popular laundry myths. This led to weekly “laundry camps”- part social gatherings, part wash-day tips - or as he calls them: an evening of “clean clothes and dirty martinis.”

His customer base became increasingly focused on how best to care for their purchases - including the dreaded “dry clean only” ones - as well as their existing closet inventory. He says if you can’t pronounce the ingredients in a laundry soap, don’t buy it. Eventually, he opened a designer resale store, where he also sold a detergent he created to specifically wash the vintage haute couture. Jobs at Neiman Marcus and as a manager and buyer of designer apparel at Nordstrom exposed Richardson to the world’s most luxurious fabrics and labels. Ultimately one of his professors gave him a life-changing revelation, telling Richardson, “you know, all that stuff is washable.” Richardson went on to study apparel, merchandising and textiles at University of Kentucky, quickly discovering that a college student’s budget left little funds for dry cleaning. “And that kind of got me started, because one of my earliest memories was handing her clothespins because she would hang everything on the clothesline.”

#The laundry guy patric richardson book how to#

So she figured out how to wash things that weren’t washable,” Richardson recalls during a recent phone chat. And when she was young there were no dry cleaners in town. And she would buy these beautiful clothes. “My granny used to drive to Columbus, Ohio, to shop. But there are also the stories behind the people and the items themselves - everything from wedding gowns to baby blankets to vintage clothing.īorn and raised in the eastern Kentucky foothills of Appalachian Mountains, Richardson began his love of all things laundry at the age of 2 ½, during the times spent with his grandmother in the small town of Grayson, Kentucky.

#The laundry guy patric richardson book series#

The series is filled with plenty of tips on how to pre-treat, wash, hang dry and properly fold all that laundry. Meet Patric Richardson, the self-proclaimed “Evangelist of Laundry” and star of the new series “The Laundry Guy,” premiering March 31 on Discovery+ (with a onetime airing at 9 p.m.