It’s hard to imagine a sport dirtier than football. Especially when it is played on natural grass, a game of football is sure to leave virtually every player sweaty and dirty. If you have a child who attends football practice all week and games on the weekend, you’re familiar with every one of these stains. Cleaning their uniform is no small task, but it doesn’t need to feel impossible. Here’s how to wash a football jersey the right way.
A Quick Overview
When a game or practice is over, follow the steps below to make quick work of washing a football jersey:
- Inspect the jersey. Give the jersey a quick once-over to make sure there’s nothing that needs to be removed before it hits the wash. Large clumps of dirt or grass should be brushed away so they don’t clog up your washing machine. This is a good time to check for rips and tears, as well.
- Machine wash the jersey on a warm or hot setting. Turning up the heat can be more effective at removing stains and odor than washing in cold water.
- Use a sports detergent. Removing stains and odor from the synthetic materials included in activewear is a tough process. Make sure you have a detergent that’s up for the job. WIN Activewear Detergent is specifically designed to treat body oil buildup and odor in sportswear.
- Tumble dry on a low- or no-heat setting. You may also choose to hang dry the jersey; just be aware that it will take significantly longer to dry this way.
Put a Stop to the Stink
When cleaning a football jersey, you need to think as much about what you smell as what you see. Sure, you want to get stains out of the jersey so it looks great for the rest of the season, but you also want to make sure to eliminate unpleasant odors that may be building up. Getting rid of that stink should be a top priority.
What Causes Football Jersey Odor?
Understanding the difference between natural and synthetic fibers with regard to how they hold onto your body’s oils makes all the difference when laundry day rolls around.
Football jerseys, like most athletic wear, are made from synthetic materials. These materials offer a long list of performance benefits, including keeping the athlete cool as they play and providing superior durability. On the downside, however, synthetic materials tend to trap oils from your skin and your sweat. As these oils and skin cells collect, they bind with the material and become a breeding ground for stinky bacteria.
How To Remove Odor From Your Jersey
The fact is, these garments are going to pick up and hold on to unpleasant odors more easily than something like a plain cotton T-shirt. And because they’re made with different materials, they need to be treated differently in the wash, too.
To remove odor, it’s important to wash your football jersey in warm or hot water, which can help to loosen oils and get rid of bacteria. But that’s only part of the process. Using the right detergent is a key piece of the puzzle as you try to eliminate odors. Unless you use a detergent that is designed to get at oils trapped in synthetic material, they are going to hang out there and continue to cause your clothes to stink.
A regular detergent is unlikely to attack the oil buildup in your jersey, leaving you with smelly clothes. A dedicated sports detergent like WIN, on the other hand, is made specifically to target this buildup in synthetic materials, helping to remove odor at its source.
Beyond The Jersey
Oils won’t just get trapped in a football jersey. Anything created with synthetic fabric is going to have the same issue of holding on to oils and creating an unpleasant smell. That means the rest of the uniform—everything from pants, to undershirt, to socks—needs to be treated with the right detergent, too. The good news is that WIN is perfect for all activewear, so you can toss everything in the same load. Efficient and effective!
Try WIN Detergent Today
You need the right detergent to knock tough odors and stains out of your football jersey time after time. Fortunately, we have designed our WIN Detergent for this specific task. Keep plenty of WIN on hand, and you’ll always be ready to wash football jerseys and other athletic gear.