How do you wash your lingerie? Soak Lingerie Wash Review

I’ve known for a number of years that I shouldn’t be sticking my lingerie in the washing machine along with all my other clothes, but I have to confess, quite a bit of my lingerie does end up spinning its way clean! I never put wired bras in the washing machine (it just seems wrong to me to have something metal in there!) but the vast majority of my knickers and other pieces of daily underwear get chucked in the laundry.
As I said though, never bras. Bras get a special treatment in my house, namely: The Bath. When you own as many bras as I do, and when those bras are, ahem, on the larger side, the bath is the best option for them in my opinion. Fortunately, the large amount of bras that I own means it can take me a while to cycle through enough wears of them before I have to do a mass bra laundry day.

Up until recently, the treatment my bras got was whatever soap was closest to hand in the bath plus a quite vigorous amount of scrubbing and a sore back afterwards – the bath is quite low. It wasn’t ideal, and in fact may have been doing just as much damage to the bras as sticking them in the washing machine would do. Because of the unique components that bras and lingerie are made out of, including various types of elastic, wires, hooks and eyes, sliders and rings, they require a less intensive wash than most clothes with chemicals that aren’t quite so harsh and can damage delicate fabrics and elastics. And that’s not to mention to the damage I might have been doing to my back over the tub – at least the washing machine was safe from damage!

I’d heard about a lingerie wash called Soak several times but never had a chance to pick one up in store anywhere, and it was just one of those things that you always forget to buy online. I’d also thought that there wasn’t much point in buying more soap for laundry when I already have so many different kinds, especially as this was a little more expensive. Actually, I was quite wrong about that, and I’m here to tell you why.

Knicker Locker offered to send us some samples of Soak to try, and I was only too happy to say yes (see their range of Soak products here). As I mentioned, I’d heard about it all over social media and on lots of blogs with good reviews, so I thought it was about time I stepped away from the old soap and gave it a go.

For some reason, it never occurred to me that the point of Soak was that you just…well, soak your lingerie in it. I’d just assumed it was another soap that had a cool name, some nice scents and looked pretty! It turns that Soak is way easier to use than your usual soap and requires a lot less effort. You simply add 1 teaspoon into 1 gallon of cold water (this took some maths on part for a bath tub!) with your garments to be washed, then leave to soak for 15 minutes.

I tested it out on a few different types of underwear (see photo above) to see how each would hold up: a very well worn everyday bra (the beige Freya Deco), a brightly coloured and patterned padded bra (the red floral Ewa Michalak), a lace bralette (the red Cosabella bralette), my Panache Sports bra, a standard pair of briefs that are labelled as handwash only (the grey/green ones from Flash You and Me), a pair of normal briefs (the red Calvin Kleins), a more delicate pair of briefs with lace edging, again handwash only (from Cheek Frills), and two pairs of handmade (by me!) knickers.

And I can happily report that everything fared absolutely perfectly! I wasn’t concerned that anything would get “damaged” by the Soak wash, but I was interested to see whether the Soak wash would leave them in the same shape as before with no stretched elastics or fabrics and if they would actually be clean, considering that they didn’t need “scrubbing” or rinsing.
I actually left them soaking for about 25 minutes because I got distracted (by food…) instead of the recommended 15, and when I came back, I came them each a quick rub over to make sure that any areas that would normally have required scrubbing were clean, and they were!

The garments then need leaving laying out flat to dry, which I managed to do outside on our garden table. Once dry, they were lovely and clean, in the same, if not better, condition than they had been before washing. Plus they smelled lovely too! The scent I chose for this wash was Yuzu which was fragrant but not over the top, which I liked. There are a choice of scents plus an unscented,.

The 90ml bottle of Soak retails for £9 from Knicker Locker, or you can get 375ml for £15. As I said, at first this seemed pricey to me for another bottle of soap, but after using it, I know I would now definitely pay that to ensure that my lingerie stays in a good shape, plus it makes it so much easier to keep them clean. I also like knowing that it’s environmentally friendly too. I’d definitely recommend trying out Soak lingerie wash if you’re looking for an easier way to wash your smalls.