Picture this: You bought a dream dress. You've worked for it for the whole month, as it's the top shelf product. You grinned to yourself like a child holding a shopping bag, thinking of your man's reaction when he sees you, about jealous friends and about your reflection in the mirror...

After wearing it a couple of times you put it in the washing machine, without even bothering about all those strange symbols on the tag. And only upon completion of the washing you realized, what a big mistake you've just made...

I know, reading washing instructions is boring. All those circles, triangles and hieroglyphs... There's so much more to do instead...

For facilitating the art of reading the pictorial letters from the producer, I decided to explain, which symbol stands for what and what is it supposed to signal us.

WASHING
The small bathtub with the number written inside shows us the temperature in which to wash a given item. If the bath has an additional underline, it means that we should use a program for delicate clothes. Whereas, a hand immersed in water is ordering us to wash clothes exclusively by hand.

Too high temperature can cause our things shrink, fade or start dyeing. And as for the delicate ones, they will simply wear out.

DRYING
A circle in a square means that we can use machine dryers for given clothes, by analogy, crossed circle in a square is forbidding to perform this.

Horizontal or vertical lines show us how to arrange clothes while drying. Most items are to be dried vertically, yet one should keep in mind that some clothes, like woollen jumpers, must be dried in the horizontal position, in order to reduce the risk of stretching them.

IRONING
It is possible to iron some things, although I realize that the iron is a long forgotten object and is intentionally hidden behind the wardrobe. The picture with the iron seems quite simple to interpret, doesn't it? Do you know, however, what these dots mean?


They indicate the temperature we should set the iron to.
one dot- lowest temperature up to 110 [nylon]
two dotsi- medium temperature up to 150 [silk, wool]
three dots- highest temperature up to 200 [cotton, linen]
crossed iron- don't iron

Oh well, let's not get paranoid. If so far you just sorted things to white and non-white, there's nothing terribly wrong with it, probably the majority of us do so. I think, that the simplest way to keep your clothes in perfect condition, would be to remember some most troublesome garments. Take a look at tags of your most elegant dresses, it may turn out that some of them could be only hand washed. If it's pretty and you adore wearing it, you'll certainly remember, how to treat it, when you dig it out of the laundry basket. Similarly with other garments. It's important to mind those most demanding clothes.

Besides, you can peek at the tag in the moment of purchase just to know earlier how to treat a given garment. The "so beautiful top", at home can turn out very demanding… I recommend checking tags and types of materia beforehand.