Tips for Cleaning Your Hockey Gear
With the hockey season being over, it’s time to clean out the bag and wash up the gear. This year, I decided to do some research and see what I can do to get my gear a little more clean than in the past. In past years, I’ve used Febreeze and just sprayed the hell out of the gear and then let it dry — that usually works pretty well, but my gear continued to look grubby and it still smelled after a while. So, in my extensive research, I found a few websites that suggested that you could just throw the majority of your gear in the washing machine. I thought that sounded weird, but my gear is so old, what could it hurt?
So, I grab my elbow pads and shin pads and in the washing machine they go! The result: my shin pads haven’t been cleaner! So, here’s my tips for cleaning YOUR gear this year:
- Throw softer gear (basically anything but your helmet or skates) in a front-loading or commercial washing machine
- I put ours on a slower spin, that seemed to keep them from banging around too horribly
- The website I read suggested putting in 1 cup of soap and 1 cup of ammonia (I just used the soap, but that worked pretty well)
- Always use cold water
- For harder gear (skates and helmet) I just used Febreeze, but the website suggests putting them in a bath tub and scrubbing with a toilet brush (a new one, please!). Someday I may try that with my helmet, but my skates are too expensive to try that!
- After all this gear is washed up, throw it in front of a fan. Leave it there for a couple days. Some of those pads will suck up the water, so it’s necessary to let it dry for a couple days before putting away for the season
That’s all I guess. As I think of things, I’ll add more points. Happy Cleaning!
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