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How to Hand Wash a Sweater

with Emily Geddes

Does your favorite sweater need to be freshened up? Before you fork over money to the dry cleaners, try this simple, affordable hand washing method.

Transcript: How to Hand Wash a Sweater

Hi, I'm Emily Geddes and I design sweaters. Today we are going to hand wash a dry clean-only sweater. I like to do this because it smells better, it feels nicer, and it is better for the environment.

Supplies Needed to Hand Wash a Sweater

Today we will be using:
  • a sweater
  • natural shampoo
  • natural conditioner
  • three basins with warm water
  • two hangers
  • a towel

Combine Shampoo and Warm Water

The first step is to take some shampoo and squeeze it into the palm of your hand, and then lather it up and put it in the water so you make soapy water. Then you take your sweater and dump it in and squeeze it.

Put Sweater in Conditioner and Water

The next step is to rinse it out. So you pick up your sweater and squeeze it gently, and you can let it soak for a second.

Now, you take a little bit of conditioner, and then you want to rub your palms together to spread out the conditioner. Then you want to put it into the clean basin of water and spread out the conditioner.

Next, we are going to go back to our sweater that is in the clean water, pick it up, and put it into the new conditioner water.

Roll Out the Wet Sweater

Next we need to get our towel and lay it out. We are going to grab our sweater out of the conditioner water, and we are going to lay it out on the towel pretty flat.

I like to roll out the sweater into the towel, and squeeze as much water out as we can. But we are not ringing or twisting, because that misshapes the sweater.

Hang Up the Sweater

So now we are going to go ahead and unroll the sweater and hang up the sweater. Take the first hanger, I like to put it where the shoulders are, and the second hanger near the waistline, so it's like a little hammock.

Then it's nice to find a safe place for your sweater to dry. So treat your wool dry-clean sweater like hair on your head because they are both protein-based fibers.

Thank you for joining us, and to learn more visit us on the Web at style.about.com.

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