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Woman shares how to wash puffer jacket after deflating hers in the washing machine
In the season when many people are putting on sweaters and coats to protect themselves from the cold, they’re also discovering that their jackets require special attention when washing.
Lili Poland (@lilipoland) posted a video showing how concerned she was that her Uniqlo puffer jacket was almost ruined after putting it in the washing machine.
“I’m also just a girl who didn’t know that the puffs in her puffer jacket would evaporate if she washed it,” Poland writes in text on her video.
Puffer jackets, known in the fashion industry as down jackets, are normally filled with feathers from a range of animals like geese and ducks. The feathers create tiny air pockets, trapping warm air and heat in the process. In Uniqlo’s case, the company uses waterfowl feathers — which it says will reduce damage when washing with water.
While down is effective in keeping people warm, there is a high level of maintenance required. According to the label on Uniqlo’s down jacket, it’s recommended that people hand-wash the puffer. Dry cleaning isn’t ideal either because the oils in the feathers can get dried up, leading to quick deterioration of the jacket. Several of Poland’s viewers shared similar sentiments about the times they didn’t care for their jackets the right way.
“I remember when these were in style back in like 2006 and I had a white one and this happened and was devastated lol,” replied @shelbyelizabeth__.
Yet many commenters told Poland about their strategies to get the puffer back to normal, which involves adding tennis balls to the dryer.
“First, use two capfuls or 100 mL of detergent. Wash it with cold water and gentle cycle,” Mitz Tiang (@michelletiang) says in her post. “When it’s done, put it into the dryers and add in the tennis balls. Set it to delicates and low heat.”
The point of adding tennis balls is to fluff up the jacket while drying, preventing clumps that would keep the puffer flat due to the forced agitation.
Tiang’s son was the one who showed her this process and says in the video that you should continually take the jacket out of the dryer to make sure the down-filled material doesn’t clump in different parts of the jacket
After seeing how Tiang’s son’s jacket turned out, some viewers were upset they hadn’t known about this process sooner.
“Where was this video last year when I ruined my orange puffer trying to clean it,” commented @habdominaire
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