How to wash a wool blanket?

Con­tent:

1. Basic rules for wash­ing wool blan­kets
2. How to wash a blan­ket cor­rect­ly?
3. Dry­ing wool blan­kets

Basic rules for washing wool blankets

How to wash a wool blan­ket to keep an attrac­tive prod­uct for a long time? Soon­er or lat­er, every house­wife thinks about this, because such an irre­place­able and prac­ti­cal thing is in almost every home. Plaids can be used in dif­fer­ent ways: they can be a great addi­tion to the inte­ri­or, empha­siz­ing the cho­sen style of dec­o­rat­ing the room, or they can be a cozy cocoon, which is nice to wrap your­self in on a cool win­ter evening with a cup of hot tea and your favorite book. In addi­tion, blan­kets per­fect­ly pro­tect the bed from any pol­lu­tion dur­ing the day. How­ev­er, they them­selves get dirty much faster. Of course, they have to be cleaned and washed from time to time. But with­out know­ing the basic rules for car­ing for woolen prod­ucts, ignor­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions on the label, hav­ing no idea about the com­po­si­tion of your favorite item, you can ruin it after the first wash. How to wash such a blan­ket with­out dam­ag­ing the fibers?

If you decide to buy a woolen blan­ket in a spe­cial­ized store? Excel­lent. You receive a prod­uct with a fac­to­ry label, which indi­cates how to wash the blan­ket. How­ev­er, it is far from always pos­si­ble to peep into such a “cheat sheet”. Espe­cial­ly if the blan­ket is hand­made. It is worth remem­ber­ing that for absolute­ly all wool prod­ucts, a few sim­ple rules of care are rel­e­vant:

1. Wool does not like too hot water. At high tem­per­a­tures, the fibers can behave com­plete­ly unpre­dictably — the blan­ket will either shrink, deform­ing beyond recog­ni­tion, or stretch, becom­ing thin­ner. Such items should be washed as del­i­cate items.
2. It is strict­ly for­bid­den both to wash the blan­ket, inten­sive­ly shuf­fling it, and to twist the prod­uct, dry it on a bat­tery or near an elec­tric dry­er — the fibers will become brit­tle.
3. Can you wash a blan­ket with bleach? Of course not, even if your blan­ket is com­plete­ly white and the bleach con­tains no chlo­rine. Any aggres­sive impact will destroy the struc­ture of the thing.
4. You should not iron the prod­uct, wool is a tex­tured mate­r­i­al, its advan­tage is light­ness and vol­ume of weav­ing. With an iron, you just spoil the tex­ture. The max­i­mum that can be done if you want to return an incor­rect­ly dried blan­ket to its orig­i­nal shape is to gen­tly walk over it with steam, moist­en­ing the sur­face and straight­en­ing the edges.
5. Any wool prod­uct should be dried on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, so it will not stretch out, and no crease will form at the fold.

How to wash a blanket correctly?

If you are going to wash your blan­ket in the machine, it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly aban­don this idea. These items can only be washed by hand. Even the most gen­tle machine wash mode is capa­ble of felt­ing the prod­uct so that after dry­ing it will resem­ble thick felt.

• Before wash­ing, it is worth soak­ing the blan­ket in a mild deter­gent solu­tion — just 10 min­utes to allow the wool to soak. Can be washed with liq­uid gels con­tain­ing lano­lin.
• In no case do not wrin­kle or rub the blan­ket. Gen­tly press down on it, caus­ing the tis­sue to absorb and release the solu­tion. The water tem­per­a­ture should not be high­er than 30 degrees.
• It is best to wash and soak the blan­ket and oth­er large items in the bath. To change the soak­ing solu­tion to a more con­cen­trat­ed wash­ing solu­tion, sim­ply drain the bath water and fill it with clean water, and then add wool wash­ing gel to it. Care­ful­ly, as if rub­bing the plaid, gen­tly turn it over with­out lift­ing it. As soon as the sur­face of the blan­ket is clean, drain the bath water again and col­lect fresh water to rinse the prod­uct.
• You need to rinse the blan­kets as care­ful­ly as you wash them, it is best to change the water as many times as pos­si­ble, adding con­di­tion­er to it.
• After all the wash­ing solu­tion is com­plete­ly washed out of the fibers, let the blan­ket drain nat­u­ral­ly by plac­ing it on a wire rack or the bot­tom of an invert­ed bowl. Woolen blan­kets can­not be twist­ed and wrung out!

Drying wool blankets

Woolen things should dry nat­u­ral­ly at room tem­per­a­ture, pre­vi­ous­ly laid out on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face cov­ered with cot­ton, and prefer­ably ter­ry cloth with good hygro­scop­ic­i­ty.

After you have fin­ished wash­ing a woolen blan­ket, you can­not dry it in the sun or in strong winds, and dry­ing on a clothes­line can com­plete­ly ruin the thing. By the way, you need to air the blan­kets in the fresh air reg­u­lar­ly, and not just after wash­ing. Nat­ur­al wool per­fect­ly absorbs any smells. If after wash­ing you decide to send your favorite blan­ket for sea­son­al stor­age, you should pack it in a spe­cial bag made of thick cot­ton.