Review: Using a Sweater Stone for Getting Rid of Pills

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has been wearing a lot of sweaters during these cold months. But nothing is worse than rummaging through your sweaters and finding that a lot of them are covered in annoying little pills. This is mainly a problem for my older knit garments, since they've seen a lot of washes. I finally decided that instead of throwing them out, I would try to fix them up.

This is a sweater stone, which I got for around $5 on Amazon. Don't ask me why the box has grease stains; it must have gotten that way when it was being stored or shipped. The stone inside was shrink wrapped, so it's definitely not the stone that was greasy.

This product received good reviews and many people said that it made their garments look brand new again. At $5, I figured it was worth a try!

I decided to try it on an old sweater dress I had. I spread out some newspaper because I had heard that the stone can leave behind some residue.

This dress was not very carefully laundered and so it was covered in pills. I still like it, but hardly ever wear it because I'm so conscious of the pills.

As you can see, it turned out pretty well. However, there are some major things that I found after using the sweater stone:

1. It is very time consuming, especially for a garment like this one with lots of pills. I had to go over each area multiple times.
2. You still need to run a lint roller over it once you're done. The sweater stone loosens the balls, but they don't always stick to the stone.
3. It did leave behind some dust-like residue, but it does not stick to the garment. You can just shake it out of the garment and sweep/vacuum it up after (which is also time consuming).

The most effective way to use a sweater stone would probably be after each wash, to prevent the pills from building up. I recommend thoroughly running the sweater stone to over one section at a time, like you would do if you were ironing. And of course, you still want to launder your clothes properly. A lot of pilling can be avoided if you air-dry instead of using the dryer.

Here's another old sweater that I tried it on. This one is thicker than the one above:

 

I definitely don't agree with the reviews that said it would make your sweaters look brand new. However, it does clean them up so that they are less shabby.

Do you have any tips to prevent or get rid of pilling on sweaters?