For the longest time, every polo/golf shirt I bought would be ruined after only a few washings.  With each washing, the collar would get an annoying crease in the wrong place.  Surely this has happened to you.  That little annoying crease would prevent the collar from laying flat and made the shirt look sloppy.

I could not figure out a way to stop this from happening.  I had imagined a special clip to attach to the collar and keep it from folding while being washed and dried.  It would have been a perfect product for Billy Mays to promote.  But not being an inventor, I decided there had to be a better way.  Well, I think I’ve found it.

After searching on the internet for ideas, I came across one that seems to work.  When I take off my shirt, I turn it inside out and then pull the collar out and button the top button before tossing it into the laundry basket.  After washing and drying, I just pull the shirt out of the dryer immediately and fold it.   I don’t really know why this seems to work, but shirts that I had sitting on my shelves and not worn for over a year because of the bad collars have now returned to their original glory.  I’m actually wearing one right now.

I also found suggestions about drying the shirt in the dryer for only a short time and then laying it out to air dry the rest of the way.  But I’ve found that drying it all the way works fine as long as you get it out of the dryer pretty quickly.

So now I’ve have solved another of life’s mysteries.  I will be moving on to bigger and better problems now like getting my kids to turn off the basement lights before coming upstairs (this would also apply to bedroom and bathroom lights).