Do you know how the inside of a sweat shirts can become stiff and no longer soft and snuggly? How can I fix that? My favorite sweat shirt is like wearing sandpaper now.
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Try getting one of those sponges that are soft on 1 side and really rough on the other that most people use to clean toilets or sinks with and flip ur sweatshirt inside out and wet it down with warm to hot water then wash it with shampoo (perferably baby shampoo.) Scrub the shampoo into it with the rough side of the sponge scrubbing in circular motions. Then condition it using conditioner, (doesn't matter what kind) scrubbing it the same way.
To prevent it from happening u might want to drip dry in ur house instead of putting it in the dryer. Dryers like to fry soft materials. And just a tip for future references NEVER put fleece in the dryer. It COMPLETELY fries it and makes the fleece hard and custy.
Short version: 1. soak sweats in a LOT fabric softener for a LONG time, rubbing it in to the inner surface. 2. wash in cool water and dry on low, or line dry. 3. use a furminator (pet grooming tool) and 'brush' the inside of your sweats to detangle/cut through all of the threads that have matted up over time.
It'll take a while if you want to get the whole inside back to 100% softness, but it's *so* worth it for anything you wear directly against your skin.
Long version: thank you to the folks who advised above about scrubbing using conditioner and using fabric softener! I combined that advice and had some luck, but it didn't get things back to the original softness. (More like going from a kind of rough shag carpet texture to a softer-but-still-bumpy berber carpet.)
But then I saw the furminator we'd bought years ago for one of our cats, and I realized that it would probably do a really good job at untangling/cutting through the fibers inside of the sweatshirt that matt up into little balls.
I think that the fabric softener was an important part of the prepping process - without that, I think that the furminator would work, but you'd probably end up cutting off a lot more 'fuzz.' Which isn't the worst thing in the world, but if you do this a lot, you're going to make the fabric thinner over time, and your winter sweats will become summer sweats.
And for anyone who hasn't used a furminator before, know that you've got to be rather gentle with it. You don't want to snag the fabric or cause it to tear, so go slowly at first. If you think about it like brushing someone's hair, imagine that you really don't want them to feel the bristles on their scalp.
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