How To Clean Your Favourite Hat

These days a good hat is pretty much a necessity on any canoe trip. A nice wide brim keeps the harmful UV off your face and helps shelter your eyes so you can scope out where on earth the portage is ahead. The problem is, after a few trips your hat can get a little stained from your perspiration (and maybe even the blood from a few smacked mosquitoes).

Each of us probably has a favourite soap to use in the washing machine and some are more effective that others. My favourite soap (Persil) is fantastic at magically making my camping clothing smell good as new, but I was stumped when I pulled out my hat to find that the stain remained. Some wear sweat stains as a badge of honour from a gruelling trip, but when I tried my secret weapon Oxi Clean which removes stains from everything else I own, I was flummoxed.

After numerous attempts using everything I could find, I finally have a solution… Krud Kutter.

Nothing really jumps out at your when reading the front of this non-toxic cleaner that would make you think that it would do the trick (although after squinting at the small print on the back of the bottle, there is an extensive list of things that it removes), but after a single spray and wash, the evidence of two years of trips magically disappeared from the brim of my hat!

You wouldn’t ordinarily think that a biodegradable cleaner would have this power, but I’m thankful that I found it.