The One Step You Absolutely Need to Take Before You Put a Winter Jacket into Storage

Most people take their down jacket for granted, expecting it to perform the same year after year, season after season, without much maintenance. Don’t be one of them.

Over time, the down inside a jacket becomes compacted and dirty, inhibiting its loft and thus its ability to keep you warm. Cleaning your jacket throughout a season, and definitely at the end of one, can revitalize its ability to perform during future adventures.

Before you stash your jacket in the gear closet for the next six months, follow these steps to keep it puffy, polished and, most of all, warm.

Step 1: Pick the right washing machine

If your home washer is of the large, front-loading variety, feel free to toss it in there. But avoid top-loaders, which often use a spinner mechanism called an agitator to stir up contents inside.

Using a machine with an agitator runs the risk of tearing your jacket or clumping the down, and you’d be better hand-washing in a bathtub instead. Avoid agitators at all costs.

Step 2: Use a detergent formulated for down

Though are plenty of good down detergents out there, such as Grangers, but Nikwax’s Down Wash.Direct is the industry standard.

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Add the down wash directly into the washing machine, using about three ounces. Follow the directions on the care label of your jacket for specific temperature and cycle settings.

Don’t forget to empty your jacket’s pockets and zip all the zippers shut.

Step 3: Throw it in the dryer with tennis balls

The trick with drying down in a machine is to go low and slow: pick the lowest temperature setting available, and budget some time to get your puffy completely dried out and ready for action.

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After you put your jacket in the dryer, but before you turn it on, add in a package of new tennis balls. As the drier spins, the tennis balls will bounce around inside the drum, breaking up any clumps of down and helping dry the jacket completely. This also helps to restore the loft in the down feathers.

Step 4: Pause the dryer and manually break up any clumps

Every twenty minutes or so, pause the dryer and manually work out larger clumps of down. While the tennis balls work well to help break up clumps, you’ll need to put some extra effort in to break them up completely.

Step 5: Tumble dry until the jacket is completely dry

Keeping going until the jacket is dry the entire way through. Not only does moist down function terribly as an insulator, but it’s also prone to mold, which leads to the only thing worse than a wet jacket: a wet and stinky one.

FAQ: Can I dry clean a down jacket?

Although it may seem like dry cleaning would be the preferred option here, when it comes to down insulation, it’s better to wash it — the down plume fill in jackets relies on natural oils to perform at its best, and the harsh chemicals involved in dry cleaning strip those away, weakening your jacket’s performance over time.

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