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You don’t want that.Īnd finally, when drying the hat, pat it dry to remove excess moisture, then consider actually wearing it to dry the rest of the way. Rather than standard detergent or cleaning product, find something that’s made specifically for wool, and soak it as directed above.īe sure to be especially gentle when doing any scrubbing if you’re too harsh, the wool can get matted and come to resemble felt. The discontinued AoM cap (if you have one, keep it, it’s now a vintage collector’s item!), for instance, is wool, and needs just a little more TLC to clean. Wool hats are a bit more delicate than your standard cotton or mesh caps. If you want to speed things up, use a small fan to blow air over it, or a hair dryer on the low setting. Throw a towel under the container too no matter how much patting you do, I’ve found there will always be some drippage. This will ensure the hat’s shape stays true and doesn’t crinkle up. Find a coffee jar, a canister, a balled-up towel, or perhaps any mannequin heads you have lying around to set it on. You want to find a way to dry the hat so it’s not just crumpled on the counter. Always air dry on some sort of container. Using your small scrubber, again spot wash those persistent problem areas, and again, be careful around stitched patterns and logos.ħ. Although the wetted fabric will hide some staining, they’ll still show through if they’re bad. About halfway through soaking, take a look at the cap and see how the stains are looking. After you’ve spot-washed, let the hat soak in the soapy water-filled bucket or sink you’ve filled for up to a couple hours, though I found that even just 20-30 minutes will get the job done. Let the hat soak for up to a couple hours. If you’re too vigorous, the stitching can become misplaced, and the artwork marred.Ĥ. One note here: Be especially careful around threaded stitching. The bill was clean of sweat stains, while the back (where I didn’t use any shampoo), remained pretty gross after cleaning: I saw a tip to use shampoo on sweat stains I tried it on one of my caps and the results were pretty spectacular. After first dipping the hat in the water of your bucket or sink, use a toothbrush or other small scrubber to rub the cleaner into the fabric. If there are areas that are especially problematic, spot-clean them with a dab of cleaning product right on the hat. Dish soap can do in a pinch, but detergent, or a dedicated stain-fighting treatment like OxiClean, is stronger and works harder at getting the stains out of the hat’s fibers.ģ.
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As it’s filling, add a tablespoon of laundry detergent or OxiClean. Fill a clean sink or bucket with warm water. Hand-washing is really the best method to retain both the color and shape of the hat.ġ.Dishwasher detergents often include bleach, and the appliance usually runs at high heat (both for washing and drying), which can damage the hat as well. You’ve probably heard you can throw caps in the dishwasher on the top rack. Don’t use any products with bleach in them you want your ballcap colors to stay nice and bright for years to come.Better to just avoid the laundry machines altogether. Dryers are too hot, and the tumbling isn’t good for the shape. A high-efficiency washer that doesn’t have a center agitating column can be okay, but even then it has to be cool water on the gentlest cycle, and you also have to be concerned about other clothes in the load squishing the hat’s form. Don’t put caps into the laundry - either the washer or dryer.Luckily for you readers, I had a few very gross hats to do some testing on. The hats came out misshapen, seemingly discolored, and only partially cleaned.īut I did some digging, and discovered a far better, and gentler, methodology for cleaning the ol’ ballcap that will refresh it, brighten it, and add years to its life. I’d tried the folk-lore-ish top-rack-of-the-dishwasher route, but it had never yielded great results for me. After a couple years of heavy use, my filthy baseball caps have been known to simply find their way to the trash rather than be washed.