I bought a sweater from Target. It’s been through the washer three times. It’s so covered in pills that even I, with my casual lifestyle and low personal standards, do not feel great about wearing it in public.

So I’m going to (try to) fix it! But…

Every time I post anywhere about dealing with pills someone over on ig says either ‘well, you should buy more expensive clothes and this won’t happen’ or ‘well, you should knit your own sweaters and this won’t happen.’ Which is, quite frankly, bullshit!

Pills happen when the ends of the fibers that make up your yarn work their way free of the yarn, then work their way free of the fabric, and tangle up with their fellows. This is more likely to happen to yarn made of shorter fibers, yarn that is more loosely twisted and more loosely plied, and yarn that is more loosely knit or woven. Expensive or hand knit items aren’t immune!

In the past, I feel like more expensive clothing had a higher chance of being made with a more tightly twisted yarn (read ‘more expensive yarn,’ because the more tightly it’s twisted, the more raw material you need to make a yarn of the same thickness, and the more material you need the more it costs) and a higher chance of being made of a more tightly knit/woven fabric (read, again, ‘more expensive fabric,’ because once again when it’s more tightly knit/woven, it just literally takes more raw material to make the same amount of fabric). But these days that is simply not the case. And knitting it yourself is no guarantee you’ll have picked a yarn that is well suited to the project (appropriate fiber blend, appropriate yarn construction) and then worked it up tightly enough to make a fabric that won’t pill.

And I’m not gonna lie, I get annoyed when folks say this. It shifts the responsibility for an inherently flawed product from the large company (who picked the yarn and decided on the fabric and sold the piece, apparently without ever checking to see how it did in the wash) to the person who bought it (assuming it was fit for the purpose it was sold for, and washed it even more gently than the care tag suggests). Because there’s no way to know for sure how something like this is going to behave until you get it home and wear it and wash it several times. At which point it’s very likely too late to return it.

And yes, most things will eventually pill a little! Which is why knowing how to deal with pills is so helpful (I love my Gleener, not sponsored, they’re just cool). But when a sweater is so covered in pills after three washes that it looks like a muppet left out in the yard all winter, that’s not great.

So I spent An Entire Hour Of My Life getting the fuzz off this thing. And that’s just the outside, not the inside. It’s honestly, it’s not all the fuzz off the outside, I just stopped because my elbow hurt. And then I spent a solid ten minutes first dusting then vacuuming the area I was working in, because it was a huge mess. And if that ends up making the sweater wearable long term, I’ll be ok with it! Not thrilled, but ok. But if it needs that much of my time and effort and attention after every two or three washes? That’s a problem.

And really, a company should not sell a piece of clothing that falls apart after three washes. That’s irresponsible. That’s part of why so many of us only wear our clothes a handful of times before we get rid of them. And yes, we can help by learning how to take care of our clothes (no really, air dry most things, it makes a huge difference in how long they last, and learn how to do basic mending)! But companies have a responsibility not to sell things that are inherently unfit for use. So we’re going to remember that, and we’re alllllllll going to do our best to get better at not telling individuals that they are responsible for fixing the structural problems caused by giant companies. Because that is for sure not the right way to solve those problems. Not even a little bit.

And yes, I will report back after I’ve worn/washed this a few more times and let you know if it pills up again. But it will be a while, because we’re moving firmly into the wool (rather than cotton) sweater season. But at some (completely unspecified) point, I’ll likely come back to it!