Wondering about your preferred method for cleaning a wool cooler? I have one that’s taken some abuse and a brush off isn’t going to do it. My options are commercial washing machine at the barn, my home top loader or front loader, or send for dry-cleaning. I’m inclined to just send it for dry cleaning, but worried that the chemical residue might cause a skin reaction next time I use it. Has anyone has an issue using dry cleaned items on their sensitive flowers?
Bonus question- how do you long term store your wool horse clothes?
Thanks!
I blow hair/dirt off mine with an industrial air system. If super dirty, soak rinse out with a tub of warm water and hang dry.
I also think that dry cleaning would be fine. You wear your dry cleaned clothes, right?
For long term storage, “washed” and folded nicely and put into plastic storage bins.
Put it in your front load washer and wash on cold with Woolite. Hang to dry.
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I usually dry clean
Okay, totally dumb question, but do they not shrink if you wash them??
They shrink if you put them in the dryer. But cold water plus woolite and shape it out to dry is fine. It’s not like wool coolers don’t get wet when you throw them over the wet horse!
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I washed one for my trainer this spring. Front load, cold/cold, gentle cycle with Melp. I hung it on the wood railing on my second floor to air dry.
In my experience they do shrink if you wash them. They shrink a lot.
I had a lovely shaped wool cooler.
It needed cleaning and I believed the source that said cold water hang dry will be fine.
The wool part shrunk like crazy. It does not come close to fitting the horse it used to fit, heck, it does not fit the pony that wears a blanket several sizes smaller than that horse.
I always dry cleaned mine, they do shrink if you wash them, at least the ones I have seen. I still have my old square one from the late 1960s! Dry cleaning it occasionally did not harm it in any way.
See, that’s my fear! I think I’ll stick to dry cleaning to be on the safe side. I just have flashbacks to the nice wool sweater I accidently washed once. It came out the size fit for a 5-year-old little girl. A skinny one at that! :lol:
