School starts here in the wettest part of the year. Afternoon storms arrive most days, they arrive fast, and a kid walking two blocks can come home soaked through with a backpack full of wet paper.
Rain gear is the one category of school clothing that fails silently. A jacket keeps working right up until it does not, and by then it has been letting water through for a month and nobody noticed why the shirt underneath was damp.
Waterproof jackets stop working, and it is usually fixable
Most rain jackets rely on two separate things, and people confuse them.
The membrane is the waterproof layer inside the fabric. It lasts a long time and it rarely fails first.
The durable water repellent finish is a coating on the outer fabric that makes water bead up and roll off. This is what wears out, and it wears out from dirt, body oil, and abrasion rather than from age.
When the finish fails, the outer fabric absorbs water instead of shedding it. The jacket gets heavy, it feels cold and clammy inside, and everyone concludes it is no longer waterproof. The membrane is usually fine. The surface is just wetted out.
The test: sprinkle water on the shoulders. If it beads, the finish is working. If it soaks in and darkens the fabric, it needs attention.
Washing a rain jacket, which is the opposite of what people assume
The instinct is to avoid washing a waterproof jacket. That instinct is exactly backwards. Dirt and body oil are what kill the water repellent finish, so a dirty jacket performs worse than a clean one.
Close every zipper and fasten every flap before washing. Open zippers abrade the fabric.
Use a technical wash rather than regular detergent. This one matters. Ordinary detergent leaves a residue that attracts water, which defeats the whole point, and any detergent with fabric softener or optical brighteners in it will ruin the finish.
Wash warm on a gentle cycle, then run an extra rinse to get all the detergent out.
Never fabric softener. It coats the fabric and destroys the repellency permanently.
Then apply heat, which is the step nobody knows about. Tumble dry on low for twenty minutes, or press with a warm iron and a cloth between. Heat reactivates the existing water repellent finish and frequently restores a jacket that seemed finished. Check the tag first, since some shells cannot take a dryer.
If heat alone does not bring the beading back, a spray-on or wash-in water repellent treatment will. Apply it to a clean jacket, never a dirty one.
Umbrellas
Nobody thinks of an umbrella as something that needs care, and then it smells like a pond in October.
The problem is that a wet umbrella gets closed and stood in a corner, and the folded fabric stays damp against itself for days. Mildew follows, and mildew on umbrella fabric stains permanently.
Open it to dry, every time. Indoors, somewhere out of the way. Even an hour open beats a week closed.
To clean one, open it, wipe with warm soapy water and a soft cloth, rinse with a clean damp cloth, and let it dry fully open.
For existing mildew, wipe with one part white vinegar to three parts water, let it sit twenty minutes, then rinse and dry open in the sun.
Check the ribs when it is open. A bent rib caught early bends back. Left alone it tears the canopy.
Backpacks in a wet climate
A backpack full of wet paper is a bad afternoon. A backpack that stays damp is a mildew problem that spreads to everything inside it.
Empty it completely when it comes home wet. Books out, papers out, lunch box out. Hang it upside down with every pocket unzipped.
Do not put it near a heater to speed it up. Heat warps the plastic frame and can delaminate the back panel.
A rain cover is worth the money if the walk is more than a block. Most packs are water resistant at best, and the seams and zippers are where water gets in regardless of the fabric.
A gallon zip bag inside for anything that must stay dry costs nothing and works.
If a pack has already gone musty, wash it: empty it, pretreat the straps and bottom, wash cold on gentle inside a pillowcase, and air dry completely with the pockets open. Never a dryer.
Shoes, which take the worst of it
Wet shoes worn again the next morning are how a kid gets a foot problem and how a smell becomes permanent.
Pull the insoles out the moment they come off. This is the step that matters most, because a shoe dried with the insole in stays wet underneath it.
Stuff with newspaper or paper towel, change it once after an hour, and leave them somewhere with air movement.
Never a dryer and never a radiator. Heat separates the glued sole and cracks the uppers.
Own two pairs for the wet months and alternate. It is the only reliable way to get a fully dry shoe every morning here.
The mildew rule for this climate
Humidity here means the usual grace period does not apply. Fabric that would be fine for a day somewhere else starts growing something the same afternoon.
Never leave a wet load in the washer, even briefly. Never hamper anything damp. Keep an open basket rather than a lidded hamper for wet things, and hang them rather than piling them.
If something has already soured, soak it in one part white vinegar to four parts warm water for an hour, then wash warm. Smell it wet before you dry it, because heat sets the smell permanently.
Do not air dry laundry indoors during the wet months. One load puts a surprising amount of water into your air, which slows the drying of everything else in the house.
Where the machines help
The drying is what defeats households here rather than the washing. A rain jacket, a backpack, a set of soaked uniforms, and a pair of shoes all need to be fully dry by morning, and a household dryer is one machine running one load at a time in a house that is already humid.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Frenchmen Street run in parallel with far higher extraction speeds, so most of the water comes out mechanically before drying even starts. After a week of afternoon storms, that is the difference between everything dry tonight and a house full of damp laundry.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry if a wet week has the household behind.
The short version
A rain jacket that has stopped beading water usually needs washing rather than replacing, because dirt and body oil are what kill the repellent finish. Use a technical wash, never fabric softener, then tumble on low to reactivate the coating. Dry umbrellas open every time, since a closed damp umbrella mildews and stains permanently. Empty a wet backpack completely and hang it upside down with the pockets open. Pull shoe insoles out to dry and own a second pair for the wet months. In this humidity nothing damp should ever go in a closed hamper.
WaveMAX New Orleans is at 4001 Frenchmen St, easy to reach from Gentilly and the surrounding neighborhoods. If something has gone musty after a wet week and you want to know whether it is recoverable, call us at (504) 881-7239.