You know what’s incredibly frustrating to launder? Anything filled with down. It floats like a duck. Water rolls off it like….water…off a duck’s…. I think I see the problem. But how to get our down jackets clean, then? Mine is aqua and it might as well be white for how clean it stays, and Henry’s is dark blue but he has nevertheless managed with effort and ingenuity to make the dirt really represent.
I looked around online for awhile, but got frustrated by all the non-answer answers all written in the same format (paragraph about the benefits of down! paragraph asking the question about washing! paragraph failing to resolve the issue! paragraph congratulating ourselves on resolving the issue!) and gave up. How would a person go about washing a DUCK, is perhaps the question we should be asking.
Right now I have the coats floating on top of the water in the washing machine (“soaking”), and periodically I go shove them under the water in frustration, and that is going to have to be good enough.
Hmm, I wash down coats and comforters on the “delicate” cycle of my boring, old, top-loading washer. Which I think is a no-no but I do it and it works. I think all the agitation and spinning gets it clean. Then I put it in the dryer with 2 clean (new, unused) tennis balls.
My mother taught me this method and it seems to work okay for me. I’m interested to read the comments and see if there is a better way. Good luck!
Bricks. Put bricks on top of them for the soaking process.
I have a front loader so that might be why I couldn’t understand your situation at first (picture me with my head tilted at the screen like a dog when you speak to him). After picturing the scenario and thinking about it, I’d recommend putting the coats in and then putting some heavy towels on top. I would think that the wet towels would hold the jackets down enough to get them sufficiently wet/washed.
I spot clean my jacket then soak and push down like you, let the wash cycle run and then put in dryer with clean tennis balls. Good luck!
I second the adding a bunch of heavy towels/other stuff to the wash. Or! Move here. It’s been in the 70s and sunny this week and I haven’t worn my down jacket since I lived in NJ.
Maybe it’s the outer material and its wicking properties that’s your problem? I don’t have that problem with my down comforter. It soaks all the way through and gets heavy as a rock. The problem is DRYING! It takes a couple dryer cycles and days of air drying to get the core completely dry. The wet down stinks, too.
Might be worth a trip to a laundromat for a front-loader… then you can dry them (with tennis shoes for rattling purposes) in their dryers, too, instead of your own.
So I wash the kids down coats in our front-loader (or my parent’s top- loader) without issue. Truthfully, I’ve never opened the top-loader mid-cycle to see if the jackets are just floating there but really they come out clean and then I stick them in the dryer and then hang them on a hanger after that if they are still damp. They come out fine. What happened to your jackets? Did they come out dirty?
Take them to the dry cleaners. Which is also my solution to anything that needs to be ironed.
Anything down filled that I’ve washed in our top loader seems to come out clean (of course, like Bird, I’ve never looked in and noticed if they were “floating”) and then toss them in the dryer with tennis balls for a few cycles.
I 2nd the thought that it might be your coat’s exterior fabric, not the down itself. I have a down coat and a down comforter and I’ve washed them in both an old fashioned top loader (no special functions or cycles) and a front loader.
I throw them in the dryer too. I use clean tennis balls- usually 2, but I think the dog stole one. It helps bounce it around so it doesn’t keep spinning with no progress. I usually do two lower heat cycles and take it out and fluff it between them. My aunt scorched her comforter with a high heat cycle, so I’m always weary of that now.
I honestly have no idea, but I do know that in one of those depressing animal conservation commercials about animals and oil spills, they clean a duck with Dawn dish soap
My secret weapon when it comes to getting the hard to clean dirty spots on coats: oxy clean spray and a effin mr. clean eraser. Scrub it good and it will get clean, promise. You are welcome!
I put mine in the washing machine on a delicate/hand wash cycle and it comes out so heavy I can barely carry it lol. I’d suggest it might be the outer fabric, in which case, try pushing the jackets under water and squeezing them a few times to see if it helps.
We don’t own/need dryers in Western Australia so I hang it on the line and go out every few hours to shake it and fluff the down.
Last night, a friend of mine said she had a hard time cleaning her family’s down coats after a ski trip (we’re in TX so no need for them on a regular basis) and I thought, “Aha! Swistle just said the same thing!” She said she read that you need a front loading machine to avoid the floating issue and to buy a special detergent from REI or other sports store. Worked like a charm.
I wash my (light pink!) down coat regularly. And I have a top load machine and yes, it floats.
Here’s what I have found that works…
Run it through the rinse and spin cycle first. It gets my coat wet, and then spin all the air out of it (down/feathers have lots of air space which, in my experience, is why my coat floats). Once it’s wet and smashed onto the side of the washer, I add detergent and then run the full wash cycle. No more floating.
It works for me every time.