What is the best way to launder clothes to make them last longer and not have pills form?
Delicate cycle or hand wash, no dryer. The less tumbling around, the better.
Remove my ignorance. What are pills?
For lack of a better term, pills are the little balls of loose threads or fibers that collect on the surface of a garment after repeated washings or wearings. I just use an electric shaver to shear them off of sweaters.
If you are in the US, there’s a product called Dryel. You stick up to 4 garments at a time with a moistened “dryer sheet” into the provided bag. You run the tumbler for 30 minutes and remove and hang. I do all my cotton and/or rayon blend sweaters this way and they don’t wear out as fast as if they were being washed and drip dried.
Laundering garments inside-out also helps. If you line-dry, this also helps to preserve the color since the outside is exposed to less ultraviolet light.