Lingerie, in general, and sexy lingerie specifically often requires special care on laundry day. There is a reason many women refer to them as delicates, as they are not particularly durable as the concept of durable lingerie is a bit counter intuitive.

Resist the urge to throw your lingerie in the washer, unless you want to replace them more often. Most washers have an agitator, which is that fin shaped apparatus in the middle of the tub that circulates the water, detergent, bleach, and the clothing. The miracle of washers is that they do the repetitive work of rubbing your clothes against a washboard as your great grandmother may have done once upon a time. Washing machines are more gentle than the wash board, which was a series of metal ridges that wore down the fabric to extract the dirt, perspiration, and the like.

While the washer is great for jeans, towels, and other clothing, it can wreak havoc on the dainty, skimpy, wispy, and delicate lingerie items like your sheer panties, bras, and lingerie items. Also, bleach and detergents are terrific for general laundering, but not for colors, lace, and sheer fabrics. Women and men hailed the arrival of the motorized washer as a true and valuable innovation that they really can not live without, but it is not necessarily appropriate for lingerie. If you must wash lingerie in the washer, then be sure to purchase a lingerie bag, which is a net bag that prevents the garments from getting entangled in the agitator and rubbing against rougher fabrics such as jeans, rivets, buttons, and zippers. These lingerie bags may be called a number of things, but they all function basically the same in keeping your delicate undies away from their rougher cousins in the soup.

While hand washing can be time consuming, it will prolong the life of your intimate apparel and allow you to control the amount of soap, fabric softener, and hot water. Hot water is intended and needed for garments that are heavily soiled and lingerie rarely if ever reaches that point. While hot water will not necessarily damage a garment, manufacturers do advise avoiding it because it can increase shrinkage and color fastness that may other wise have a damaging effect on delicates. Cool water is best as the lingerie likely does not require hot water and hand washing is preferred as you determine how much pressure and time the garment sits in the water and soap solution. Less is more simply because you do not need a lot of rubbing the garment together to get it clean.

Do not even think of washing an article of clothing that has a dry clean only tag attached to it, because if the manufacturer says the item should be dry cleaned, then it should only be dry cleaned, always. Who should know better about how to care for an item than the company that made it, especially since they do not get a commission for suggesting the proper cleaning method.