How To Wash Football Gloves? (The Process Explained)

Gloves are one of the smallest yet one of the most important pieces of equipment in football. Many reasons and benefits make football athletes wear gloves, and it’s almost a necessity to have competitive performance on the field. However, when you play sports, sweat is included, and your hands aren’t safe from it. Thus, football gloves will become dirty, smell, and lose touch.

In this article, I’ll guide you through how to wash football gloves, where you can and can’t wash them, how to remove bad odor from them, and the ideal timespan for how often you should wash them.

Without further due, let’s look at two methods you can wash your football gloves.

How to Wash Football Gloves

There are two main ways to wash your football gloves: by hand and a washing machine. My preferred choice is to handwash them, as it’s the safest way to do it.

Handwashing Guide

You will need a sink with a plug, bucket, or a similar container that can hold water for handwashing. In addition, you’ll need mild detergent and warm water. Follow the instructions below;

1. Preparation: Start by filling your sink, bucket, or container with slightly warmer water than your body temperature, 104°F (40°C). Don’t go overboard with the temperature, as it can damage the gloves. Mix in a tablespoon worth of mild laundry detergent, or if they are very dirty and smelly, add a denture-cleaning tablet instead.
2. Wash your gloves: Before soaking your football gloves, rinse them with water to get most of the excess dirt and debris out. After, soak your gloves and scrub them inside out with your fingers. If the gloves are really dirty, you can use a laundry brush, but be careful with the glove’s grip.
3. Rinse your gloves: After you deem the gloves clean, you need to rinse them with soapy water. Do it by rinsing the gloves inside out under running water and gently squeezing the excess water off.
4. Air dry: When looking at a pair of clean and moist gloves, you should air dry them because it’s the most natural way. Don’t dry your gloves under burning hot sunlight, or microwave, as someone has suggested.

As you can see, the process of hand washing your football gloves isn’t exactly rocket science. If you don’t have time to handwash or don’t want to, you can also place them on a washing machine. However, you need to keep a thing or two in mind. Stick with me and learn what.

Machine Washing Guide

Machine washing your football gloves is a less hands-on way, and you can do it conveniently with your other laundry.

1. Read washing instructions: Read the small information tag inside your glove before doing anything. This tells you what the gloves are made from, where, in addition to washing instructions. Be prepared to follow the instructions.
2. Remove excess dirt: Next, remove any excess dirt, dust, and sand from your gloves. You can rinse them under cold water and give them a quick scrub.
3. Flip gloves inside out: Flip your gloves inside out for maximum washing efficiency. This way, sweat, odor, and dirt will be removed more easily.
4. Find a pillowcase: You don’t want to put the gloves inside a washing machine as they are because the material, grip, or whole glove could get damaged. Instead, place the gloves inside a pillowcase, laundry bag, or something that can protect the gloves during a wash.
5. Select cold & gentle washing: Set the washing machine according to the glove manufacturer’s instructions, or if you don’t have any, set it to cold and gentle wash. Hot water can severely damage the grip on the gloves or shrink them, so it’s better to go with cold and gentle. Oh, and select a washing detergent fit for synthetic materials. Then, wash your gloves with another laundry.
6. Air dry: When the laundry is finished, hang them to dry with the other laundry on a dryer rack or place them outside for more fresh air drying.

That can be a lot of information to take in at once, especially if you haven’t washed football gloves before. That said, you can see the most important things learned below, so you don’t forget anything essential.

• Read the information tag inside the gloves.
• Don’t use hot water.
• Use detergent fit for synthetic materials.
• Protect your gloves when using a washing machine.
• Air dry only, no under the sunlight or weird techniques.

How Do You Get the Smell Out of Football Gloves?

The odor on football gloves is the toughest thing to remove when dirt often gets removed quite easily. Regardless of whether you hand wash or machine wash your football gloves, the smell of sweat can still linger. So, what’s the best way to remove the smell of football gloves?

To remove bad odor from football gloves, wash them in a machine with cold water and detergent safe for synthetic materials. If the odor remains, you can hand wash them by soaking a denture tabled in warm water, adding tea bags inside the gloves overnight, or spraying them with rubbing alcohol.

A proper hand or machine wash should get rid of the odors. However, that’s not the case every time, as the odor can get stuck on the gloves. Luckily, there are some practical and very creative ways to get the odors out once and for all. I already revealed a couple of things, but I’ll list some more!

• Freeze the gloves: I’ll tell you what the saleswoman said to me when I bought new jeans, and it works wonders. Freezeout the odor! That’s right. Place your football gloves inside a plastic bag and place them in the freezer. Take them out in the morning, that them out, and the odor will be gone!
• Use tea bags: Tea isn’t just a delicious drink, but it’s an effective odor repellant. Place a new, fresh tea bag on both football gloves, and they will soak the odors for you. Keep the tea bags inside the gloves overnight.
• Detergent booster & cinnamon: You can also make a DIY odor repellant by using a detergent booster such as Borax and cinnamon. Place a teaspoon worth of Borax laundry booster in the middle of an old rag and add a pinch of cinnamon on top of it (repeat for both gloves). Tie up the rag, place it inside your glove, and leave it overnight. The odor will be gone in the morning!
• Spray them with rubbing alcohol: You can also spray your football gloves with rubbing alcohol or vodka. Remember that you shouldn’t try this if your gloves have any authentic leather. After spraying your gloves with alcohol, make sure the rinse them with cold water.

Note that if your football gloves are in too bad shape, you might not be able to get the stink out. If that’s the case, I highly recommend that you read my article about the best sticky football gloves and get a new pair.

How Often Should You Wash Football Gloves?

I recently bought a new pair of quality jeans, and the saleswoman told me that they would last approximately ten machines was in their prime, so I shouldn’t wash them immediately when I notice slight dirt. This got me thinking that there must be people wondering the same thing about football gloves. How often should you wash them?

Generally, you should wash football gloves every other week to keep them clean and fresh, yet without overwashing and wearing them out. However, if your gloves need more frequent washing, you can wash them once a week. More washing will wear the gloves quickly, so it isn’t recommended.

The frequency you need to wash your gloves depends on many factors, such as how often you train, how hard you train, whether you sweat much, and your cleanliness preferences.

Some people might wash their gloves once a month, whereas others need a new pair of gloves twice a month. The differences are big, and ultimately only you will know your specific situation.

As a rule of thumb, wash your gloves when then need them because playing with dirty gloves isn’t pleasant. Still, keep in mind that washing them multiple times a week will wear out the material quickly.