How to Remove Lint Bobbles and Fuzz Balls

What Are Pills, Bobbles, Lint, or Fuzz Balls?

When clothes without care, you may see loose fibers start to appear on the surface of the fabric. The pills give giving a rough texture to the otherwise smooth fabric. There are many names for these tiny balls of fiber; pills, bobbles, lint balls, and fuzz-balls, to name just a few.

You’ve seen them on your sweaters, your workout clothes, even your favorite pair of pants – those small, firm balls of lint frequently referred to as “pills.” These pesky pieces are the result of normal wear and tear – broken clothing fibers on the surface of clothes become tangled together and attract loose micro-threads during the wash cycle.

Over time, these threads clump together, forming the characteristic lint ball that sticks to your clothing. While this is common, it is possible to learn how to prevent pilling, as well as how to remove these pills from sweaters and other everyday garments.

How to Remove Lint Bobbles and Fuzz Balls?

1. Buy a fabric or Sweater shaver. A sweater shaver or fabric Shaveris simple to use and much safer than using a standard razor blade. But make sure you concentrate while you’re removing the fuzz-balls, otherwise, you’ll remove too much of the fabric, and the surrounding material will become overly thin.
2. A sweater stone is like a pumice stone but designed especially for clothing. Just like smoothing away the rough skin from your feet, a sweater stone removes the rough parts from your clothes, and the lint balls vanish like magic.
3. Use duct or sticky tape as a lint remover. Cut a piece of tape and lay the sticky side on your clothes. As you pull it off, the pilling should come off with the tape. You can also buy lint rollers with sticky tape on a roll.
4. Use a very sharp pair of scissors to snip off each bobble individually. Slow but is a low-tech method of removing pills. Pull at the lint ball gently and cut off each one individually.