FA+
Shop
The realities of Fursuit Maintenance
10 years ago
Fursuiters face many challenges. Fursuits are famous for being extremely hot - anyone can look at a Fursuiter walking around in the summer and go "the poor person inside must be dying of heat." The omnipresence of Headless Lounges at Furry conventions makes it impossible to not know how hot Fursuits are. Anyone interested in fursuiting will quickly learn about all the discomfort and danger associated with suiting - limited vision, limited movement, limited ability to breathe, limited speech, limited dexterity, dehydration, risk of heat stroke, potential tackle hugs from fanboys. Anyone who wants to take up the mantle of fursuiting is well-aware of all these realities.
One other huge challenge is cost. Fursuits are expensive - again, this is impossible to not know about if you are interested in fursuits. It's a prime subject of conversation.
One challenge that isn't a prime subject of conversation, however, is fursuit maintenance. It is entirely possible to get blindsided by the amount of work necessary to take care of a fursuit - I certainly was, and no internet guide can prepare you for the logistics nightmare that is carrying, cleaning and storing a fursuit. Virtually no one ever talks about it, and even visiting a few furry conventions will not give you an appreciation for the amount of work involved. It is entirely invisible to the public, and with good reason: nothing kills the magic faster than having to take a gross, smelly fursuit home and spend hours cleaning every single part by hand.
I often mused that, if I had a fursuit of my own, I would wear it multiple times a week, just for fun. I couldn't understand why fursuit owners didn't wear them on a regular basis, just going out to walk around town in fursuit flippantly.
I learned why on the evening of the first day after I got my suit as I was on my knees in front of the bathtub squeezing dirty water out of my wet bodysuit.
Putting on and taking off a fursuit is a lengthy, complex, involved, difficult and time-consuming process.
Cleaning a fursuit is also all of those things, but several orders of magnitude moreso.
I am, by any definition, a newbie fursuiter. I've had my Nitram fursuit for less than a month - I've worn it six or seven times so far. Don't take anything you read here as gospel - there are much better sources of hard information out there, with my personal favorite being this one: http://forums.furtopia.org/kobuk�.....care-tutorial/ You should always defer to your fursuit maker's advice whenever possible, and in all cases exercise your own judgment. Ultimately, it's your fursuit, and no one is responsible for it other than you. If you ruin it, it's on you.
Fursuit maintenance is half inexact science, half black art. Fursuiting is not a mainstream activity - most people know nothing about it. There is no Fursuit store you can visit at the mall to pick up everything you need for your fursuit. Just like fursuit makers, fursuiters borrow an array of objects meant for various (non-fursuit) purposes and apply them to fursuiting. None of these products were designed with fursuiters in mind - they are products that, coincidentally, happen to work well with fursuits, as past fursuiters have learned and discovered.
You will need to haunt sporting goods store for your dryfit undersuit, as well as dryfit socks and gloves if you choose to use them - I wear $20 dryfit socks but could never find dryfit gloves. When clerks ask what you're looking for, the best short-hand explanation you can give is that you're a sports mascot - while they probably don't see those often, it's something they're familiar enough with to help and direct you. While picking up your undersuit, I recommend you pick up a Camelbak as well - it is a literal lifesaver and the best purchase you can make beyond the essentials. Try to find one that matches your suit's color - easy enough if you're a black wolf, harder if you're a purple panda. Don't go for a $12 knockoff on Amazon, which will leak into your suit during your first outing - go for the actual, $80 2L Camelbak. As a side-bonus it can hold your wallet, phone and keys while you suit - remember that most fursuits have no pockets.
Your fursuiting gear will need to be assembled from a mish-mash of sources. Finding a balaclava in the summer is surprisingly difficult - sporting goods store will tell you to come back in the winter. Furry conventions sometimes stock them - fursuit makers also sometimes have them. If all else fails, the internet has what you need, provided you're willing to pay shipping costs and wait a few weeks.
Pet stores and hardware stores are mainstays for fursuiters. Pet stores have the brushes you need to keep your fur looking nice - brushing your fursuit is NOT OPTIONAL. Get a nice slicker brush and brush using its reverse side, which tears out less fur - or so they say. I've never made the experiment - for some reason, I feel ill at ease experimenting on my $2000 one-of-a-kind custom-made irreplaceable art piece. While visiting the pet store, you may buy a collar (and maybe a leash) for yourself if you're into that. You may get some weird stares if you try on a collar at the pet store.
Hardware stores have a multitude of products you need for fursuit maintenance. Detergents and cleaning products are essential - Woolite is the gold standard for fursuit washing, although which variety you should get is a complete mystery. Carpet cleaners such as Folex or Spot-Shot have a good reputation when it comes to spot cleaning stains off of parts which you can't submerge in water - that is, anything made with foam such as footpaws, tails or heads. Lysol seems hotly debated - some people swear by it while others claim it damages foam, eating it away over time. The warning label clearly states not to apply it to acrylic plastics (which your faux fur is) so at the very least, never apply Lysol to fur. I use it to disinfect the inside of the my head and footpaws. While the inside of my head doesn't smell too bad after a fursuit outing, the inside of my footpaws certainly do.
Oh, and speaking of acrylic plastics: ACRYLIC MELTS. NEVER APPLY HEAT TO A FURSUIT. Cleaning a fursuit in hot water means permanent, irreparable damage to the fur. Cold water only. If that. Foam and airbrushed markings both hate water - never submerge foam in water, and never apply any water to airbrushed fur. Stay the hell away from rain. Stay away from food, stay away from drinks and stay away from anyone who's had too much to drink.
Don't expect hardware store clerks to be of any actual use when it comes to buying cleaning products. They don't know what a fursuit is, and they certainly don't know how their miscellaneous carpet stain remover will interact with it. Your fursuit maker might know, and if not the internet might know. The internet might also provide conflicting advice, so hey: good luck.
There is no established scientifically-backed standard for how much of a product you should use when cleaning a fursuit, or even which product you should use. The best you can find is a mixture of guidelines, hearsay and folklore. Part of doing fursuit maintenance means taking in a lot of knowledge and advice and synthesizing it into a cleaning routine that works for you, with the tools you have at your disposition. You will have to improvise quite a bit the first time you clean your suit, but it gets easier over time.
Speaking of tools, hardware stores also have the actual hardware you need. If your suit has fans (and really, it should) then you can get batteries and battery chargers there. While you're at it, you can get a clothes dryer to hang your bodysuit to dry, some hooks or portmanteaus to hang your fursuit parts on for storage, some garment bags for storing or carrying parts of your suit, some fans to dry your fursuit parts, and so on.
Neverwet for fabric is something that can be applied to a fursuit to render it hydrophobic, although it does make fur noticeably less soft to the touch. My footpaws are coated in it, but it certainly doesn't magically keep dirt stains away. Use it or don't - I haven't noticed it helping much.
You might wonder why it's necessary to clean a fursuit. If that's the case, go find a fursuiter and hang around them for a few hours. Just before they go off to unsuit, give them a hug. The gross, icky feel of sweaty wet fur on your hands should be all the answer you need.
Fursuits are hot. Fursuiters sweat. Fursuiters sweat through their undersuit and into their bodysuit. Bodysuits become gross alarmingly quickly, and an unwashed body suit reeks not unlike a pair of old gym shorts.
How much work is it to clean a fursuit? Rather than give a hard number of hours (and it is hours, plural) I thought I'd list out every single step from my own personal fursuit cleaning routine. This is, at minimum, what I go through whenever I finish a long fursuiting session. Note that this is only applicable to myself and my fursuit - every fursuit is different, and you shouldn't take this as advice on how to maintain your fursuit.
Nitram's cleaning routine:
Unpacking:
1. Clear off a section of the bed to hold the tail
2. Remove the tail from its giant garment bag and lay it on the bed
3. Pull the bodysuit out from its suitcase and hang it on a clothes-hanger on a nearby door
4. Pull out the handpaws and lay them somewhere
5. Pull out the footpaws from their individual plastic bags
6. Throw away the dirty individual plastic bags
7. Pull the head out from its cloth bag, setting aside the bubble wrap coating
Pre-cleaning:
8. Scrub the bathtub clean, using a coarse handbrush and some detergent
9. Rinse off the bathtub and wipe off any residues with a clean rag
10 & 11: Repeat 8 & 9 for the bathroom sink
Cleaning the bodysuit:
12. Plug the bathtub drain using a rag
13. Fill up the bathtub with cold water
14. While the bathtub is filling up, add a small amount of Woolite Extra Delicate care to the bathtub. What "a small amount" means is completely up to you.
15. Take the bodysuit and CAREFULLY turn it inside out, making sure not to rip off any fur fibers
16. Once the bathtub is full of cold, sudsy water, drop your bodysuit into the bath
17. Using your hands, CAREFULLY move around the bodysuit in the water to help the soapy water get into every corner. Try not to rip off any fur
18. Try not to think too hard about the fact that you're sticking your hands in a detergent solution that explicitly warns you not to get any on your skin.
19. After shaking your suit around in the water for a while, you can stop. Optionally, you may leave it to soak in the tub for a short amount of time. Should you? It is a mystery.
20. Unplug the drain and watch the soapy water drain out. You'll have to move your suit out of the way to let the water drain properly. This takes a while.
21. Try not to feel bad about all the fur you'll see go into the drain (spoilers: this is impossible)
22. Once all the water has drained out, re-plug the bathtub drain.
23. Re-fill the bathtub with cold water, but this time don't add any Woolite.
24. Again, gently move your suit around in the water to get all the soap out.
25. You can let it soak if you feel like it.
26. Unplug the drain (again) and watch the clean water drain out (again). You'll have to move your suit out of the way to let the water drain properly (again). This takes a while (again).
27. Gently compress the suit using your hands in order to squeeze out the excess water.
28. Leave it there for a while while the water slowly seeps out.
29. Come back and re-position the suit (GENTLY) on the side of the bathtub so that gravity will work to pull water out of the suit.
30. Leave it there for a while again. If you try to hang your suit while it is still soaking wet, you will most likely cause permanent damage to it.
31. Squeeze some water out of the extremities of the arms and legs.
32. Re-position it a bit higher to let it drain more. Having a specialized dryer is helpful for this - I don't have one but I should get one.
33. Wait some more.
34. Find a spot where you can hang a wet fursuit to dry. This is harder than it sounds. You cannot hang it outside on a clothesline - sunlight damages the suit and you run the risk of it getting stolen. The bodysuit is incredibly tall and you don't want the legs sitting on the ground, so most locations are too low. A wet fursuit still holds a ton of water, so hanging it off a door and leaving a towel underneath is not viable.
35. What I settled on personally was hanging it off the showerhead. Water drips into the bathtub which is convenient, but I still worry the showerhead will break off one day.
36. Leave the fursuit to dry there until your roommates hate you.
37. Build an improvised fursuit drying station: you will need a chair, a cardboard box, an extension cord, a large fan, a clotheshanger, a tall door and a dry towel.
38. Put the chair in front of the tall door
39. Balance the fan on top of the chair and point it towards the door
40. Plug the fan into the extension cord and the extension cord into the nearest power outlet.
41. Block the door from moving using the cardboard box
42. Put the dry towel at the base of the door to catch any dripping water
43. Take the damp fursuit and take it to your improvised fursuit drying station.
44. Your fursuit is now mostly dry and is being fanned to get all the moisture out.
45. Leave it there overnight and pray your roommates don't spill food on it as they walk past your improvised fursuit drying station.
Cleaning the handpaws (this is the easiest part)
46. Plug the sink drain
47. Fill up the sink with cold water
48. While the sink is filling up, add a tiny amount of Woolite Extra Delicate care to the sink. What "a tiny amount" means is completely up to you.
49. Once the sink is full of cold, sudsy water, drop your handpaws into the sink. You can't turn most handpaws inside out.
50. Using your hands, CAREFULLY move around the handpaws in the water to help the soapy water get into every corner. Try not to rip off any fur
51. Try not to think too hard about the fact that you're sticking your hands in a detergent solution that explicitly warns you not to get any on your skin.
52. After shaking your handpaws around in the water for a while, you can stop. Optionally, you may leave them to soak in the sink for a short amount of time. Should you? It is a mystery.
53. Unplug the drain and watch the soapy water drain out.
54. Once all the water has drained out, re-plug the sink drain.
55. Re-fill the sink with cold water, but this time don't add any Woolite.
56. Again, gently move your handpaws around in the water to get all the soap out.
57. You can let it soak if you feel like it.
58. Unplug the drain (again) and watch the clean water drain out (again).
59. Gently compress the fingers of your handpaws using your hands in order to squeeze out the excess water.
60. Leave the handpaws there for a while while the water slowly seeps out.
61. Handpaws soak up a lot less water than your suit, so drying them is much simpler. You can pull them up and let them hang vertically without too much fear of damaging them, as long as they're not exceedingly wet.
62. After your handpaws have dripped for a while, pick them up one by one, give the fingers one last squeeze and go lay them to rest on a horizontal portable fan.
63. Leave your handpaws on the fan overnight.
Cleaning the tail
64. Lay the tail on a long, clean surface. I use my bed.
65. Gently brush the length of the tail (all six feet of it) using the reverse side of a slicker brush.
66. Feel bad every time you hand to remove a huge chunk of fur from the slicker brush which is supposed to not pull fur out.
67. Flip the tail around and brush the other side (this takes a while)
68. As you brush, throw away whatever gunk or pieces of dead vegetation your tail has picked up since your last outing.
69. Silently envy all the fursuiters who went with a tail of reasonable size.
70. Lovingly caress the length of your now freshly-fluffed soft tail with your hands. You may optionally hug it.
Storing the tail
71. Look around your apartment for a place to hang a 6' tall tube of fur.
72. Look for portmanteaus that go higher than 6' (spoilers: there are none)
73. Make plans to install hooks on the ceiling
74. Improvise a tail hanging station: first, strap the belt into the tail
75. Loop the belt around a heavy cardboard box which is resting on top of one of your cupboards next to your bed.
76. Admire your ingenuity as the tail spans nearly from the ceiling to the floor
77. Cover up the tail with an improvised tarp made from tape and garbage bags
Head maintenance
78. Pull the batteries out of the fan battery pack
79. Hook up the batteries to a battery recharger
80. Hit the inside of the head with a few shots of Lysol to disinfect it
81. Pull out the scraps of fur stuck inside the head's zipper. You may need to apply force - you may need to apply scissors. You may feel terrible.
82. Brush the fur on one side of the head
83. Awkwardly attempt to avoid undoing your work as you try to rest the head on its brushed side to brush the other side.
84. Attempt to brush the airbrushed bits of fur on the head. Airbrushed fur tends to be stiff and matted - brushing it is extremely awkward and near futile.
85. Wait a few hours for the batteries to recharge, then stick them back into the fan battery pack
86. Struggle to close the battery pack, which is crammed inside a chunk of foam and behind a sheet of fur
87. Re-line the cloth bag with bubble wrap
88. Put the head back inside the cloth bag and leave it wherever.
Footpaw maintenance
89. Lament the sorry state of your footpaws. If you go suiting outside like I do, your footpaws will end up dirty and damaged after every session.
90. Pull out the chunks of grime and dead vegetation from your footpaws
91. Wipe the fur back into place using your hands.
92. Hit the inside of each footpaw with a bit of Lysol to disinfect them.
93. Get your bottle of Folex and spray every stain with it
94. Scrub the stains with your hand to get the cleaning product in there
95. Get a clean rag, rinse it in cold water and wipe off the Folex.
96. Leave your footpaw to dry on a running horizontal fan.
97. Repeat steps 92 through 96 for both footpaws until the stains have disappeared or until your standards for cleanliness are lowered.
98. Take note of the tendency for Folex to leave behind a nasty sticky residue that turns fur into an ugly clump of dirt which you have to rip out.
99. Brush your footpaws to the best of your ability
100. Store each footpaw in an individual plastic bag. Leave the bags wherever.
Next morning
101. Your handpaws should now be dry. Brush them and put them away.
102. Your bodysuit should be mostly dry. Turn it inside out again, GENTLY without ripping out fur
103. Brush your bodysuit. This is a lengthy undertaking.
104. Lament the matting of the fur where you sweat the most: your armpits, crotch and ass. The fur in those locations will NEVER look nice.
105. Store your bodysuit. I hang it off the belt holding the tail and cover it with a garbage-bag-tape-tarp.
106. Your suit is now fully clean! Congratulations. Swear off fursuiting forever, until your brain forgets all the work it just took to clean it and goes "Hey, I should go walk around town in suit, it'll be fun!"
As I write this, I've finished steps 1 through 88, I'm waiting for my bodysuit to dry off so I can move it to my fursuit drying station and I'm dreading having to clean my footpaws, which I'll most likely push off to tomorrow.
My last fursuiting session was a relatively short one, and I thought I could get away with not washing the whole thing. One whiff of my bodysuit as I took it out of its suitcase told me how wrong I was.
So, the next time you hug a fursuiter, if their fur feels nice and soft and smells good, know that it took a lot of work to get it that way. Hold them close and whisper tenderly into their ear: "you smell sooooo goooood..." * A normal person might find that creepy, but I'd take it as a badge of pride for my fursuit cleaning discipline.
* Note: please don't actually do this. Thanks.
Some resources:
http://forums.furtopia.org/kobuk�.....care-tutorial/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEY.....GAAW8tT51AYSjK
One other huge challenge is cost. Fursuits are expensive - again, this is impossible to not know about if you are interested in fursuits. It's a prime subject of conversation.
One challenge that isn't a prime subject of conversation, however, is fursuit maintenance. It is entirely possible to get blindsided by the amount of work necessary to take care of a fursuit - I certainly was, and no internet guide can prepare you for the logistics nightmare that is carrying, cleaning and storing a fursuit. Virtually no one ever talks about it, and even visiting a few furry conventions will not give you an appreciation for the amount of work involved. It is entirely invisible to the public, and with good reason: nothing kills the magic faster than having to take a gross, smelly fursuit home and spend hours cleaning every single part by hand.
I often mused that, if I had a fursuit of my own, I would wear it multiple times a week, just for fun. I couldn't understand why fursuit owners didn't wear them on a regular basis, just going out to walk around town in fursuit flippantly.
I learned why on the evening of the first day after I got my suit as I was on my knees in front of the bathtub squeezing dirty water out of my wet bodysuit.
Putting on and taking off a fursuit is a lengthy, complex, involved, difficult and time-consuming process.
Cleaning a fursuit is also all of those things, but several orders of magnitude moreso.
I am, by any definition, a newbie fursuiter. I've had my Nitram fursuit for less than a month - I've worn it six or seven times so far. Don't take anything you read here as gospel - there are much better sources of hard information out there, with my personal favorite being this one: http://forums.furtopia.org/kobuk�.....care-tutorial/ You should always defer to your fursuit maker's advice whenever possible, and in all cases exercise your own judgment. Ultimately, it's your fursuit, and no one is responsible for it other than you. If you ruin it, it's on you.
Fursuit maintenance is half inexact science, half black art. Fursuiting is not a mainstream activity - most people know nothing about it. There is no Fursuit store you can visit at the mall to pick up everything you need for your fursuit. Just like fursuit makers, fursuiters borrow an array of objects meant for various (non-fursuit) purposes and apply them to fursuiting. None of these products were designed with fursuiters in mind - they are products that, coincidentally, happen to work well with fursuits, as past fursuiters have learned and discovered.
You will need to haunt sporting goods store for your dryfit undersuit, as well as dryfit socks and gloves if you choose to use them - I wear $20 dryfit socks but could never find dryfit gloves. When clerks ask what you're looking for, the best short-hand explanation you can give is that you're a sports mascot - while they probably don't see those often, it's something they're familiar enough with to help and direct you. While picking up your undersuit, I recommend you pick up a Camelbak as well - it is a literal lifesaver and the best purchase you can make beyond the essentials. Try to find one that matches your suit's color - easy enough if you're a black wolf, harder if you're a purple panda. Don't go for a $12 knockoff on Amazon, which will leak into your suit during your first outing - go for the actual, $80 2L Camelbak. As a side-bonus it can hold your wallet, phone and keys while you suit - remember that most fursuits have no pockets.
Your fursuiting gear will need to be assembled from a mish-mash of sources. Finding a balaclava in the summer is surprisingly difficult - sporting goods store will tell you to come back in the winter. Furry conventions sometimes stock them - fursuit makers also sometimes have them. If all else fails, the internet has what you need, provided you're willing to pay shipping costs and wait a few weeks.
Pet stores and hardware stores are mainstays for fursuiters. Pet stores have the brushes you need to keep your fur looking nice - brushing your fursuit is NOT OPTIONAL. Get a nice slicker brush and brush using its reverse side, which tears out less fur - or so they say. I've never made the experiment - for some reason, I feel ill at ease experimenting on my $2000 one-of-a-kind custom-made irreplaceable art piece. While visiting the pet store, you may buy a collar (and maybe a leash) for yourself if you're into that. You may get some weird stares if you try on a collar at the pet store.
Hardware stores have a multitude of products you need for fursuit maintenance. Detergents and cleaning products are essential - Woolite is the gold standard for fursuit washing, although which variety you should get is a complete mystery. Carpet cleaners such as Folex or Spot-Shot have a good reputation when it comes to spot cleaning stains off of parts which you can't submerge in water - that is, anything made with foam such as footpaws, tails or heads. Lysol seems hotly debated - some people swear by it while others claim it damages foam, eating it away over time. The warning label clearly states not to apply it to acrylic plastics (which your faux fur is) so at the very least, never apply Lysol to fur. I use it to disinfect the inside of the my head and footpaws. While the inside of my head doesn't smell too bad after a fursuit outing, the inside of my footpaws certainly do.
Oh, and speaking of acrylic plastics: ACRYLIC MELTS. NEVER APPLY HEAT TO A FURSUIT. Cleaning a fursuit in hot water means permanent, irreparable damage to the fur. Cold water only. If that. Foam and airbrushed markings both hate water - never submerge foam in water, and never apply any water to airbrushed fur. Stay the hell away from rain. Stay away from food, stay away from drinks and stay away from anyone who's had too much to drink.
Don't expect hardware store clerks to be of any actual use when it comes to buying cleaning products. They don't know what a fursuit is, and they certainly don't know how their miscellaneous carpet stain remover will interact with it. Your fursuit maker might know, and if not the internet might know. The internet might also provide conflicting advice, so hey: good luck.
There is no established scientifically-backed standard for how much of a product you should use when cleaning a fursuit, or even which product you should use. The best you can find is a mixture of guidelines, hearsay and folklore. Part of doing fursuit maintenance means taking in a lot of knowledge and advice and synthesizing it into a cleaning routine that works for you, with the tools you have at your disposition. You will have to improvise quite a bit the first time you clean your suit, but it gets easier over time.
Speaking of tools, hardware stores also have the actual hardware you need. If your suit has fans (and really, it should) then you can get batteries and battery chargers there. While you're at it, you can get a clothes dryer to hang your bodysuit to dry, some hooks or portmanteaus to hang your fursuit parts on for storage, some garment bags for storing or carrying parts of your suit, some fans to dry your fursuit parts, and so on.
Neverwet for fabric is something that can be applied to a fursuit to render it hydrophobic, although it does make fur noticeably less soft to the touch. My footpaws are coated in it, but it certainly doesn't magically keep dirt stains away. Use it or don't - I haven't noticed it helping much.
You might wonder why it's necessary to clean a fursuit. If that's the case, go find a fursuiter and hang around them for a few hours. Just before they go off to unsuit, give them a hug. The gross, icky feel of sweaty wet fur on your hands should be all the answer you need.
Fursuits are hot. Fursuiters sweat. Fursuiters sweat through their undersuit and into their bodysuit. Bodysuits become gross alarmingly quickly, and an unwashed body suit reeks not unlike a pair of old gym shorts.
How much work is it to clean a fursuit? Rather than give a hard number of hours (and it is hours, plural) I thought I'd list out every single step from my own personal fursuit cleaning routine. This is, at minimum, what I go through whenever I finish a long fursuiting session. Note that this is only applicable to myself and my fursuit - every fursuit is different, and you shouldn't take this as advice on how to maintain your fursuit.
Nitram's cleaning routine:
Unpacking:
1. Clear off a section of the bed to hold the tail
2. Remove the tail from its giant garment bag and lay it on the bed
3. Pull the bodysuit out from its suitcase and hang it on a clothes-hanger on a nearby door
4. Pull out the handpaws and lay them somewhere
5. Pull out the footpaws from their individual plastic bags
6. Throw away the dirty individual plastic bags
7. Pull the head out from its cloth bag, setting aside the bubble wrap coating
Pre-cleaning:
8. Scrub the bathtub clean, using a coarse handbrush and some detergent
9. Rinse off the bathtub and wipe off any residues with a clean rag
10 & 11: Repeat 8 & 9 for the bathroom sink
Cleaning the bodysuit:
12. Plug the bathtub drain using a rag
13. Fill up the bathtub with cold water
14. While the bathtub is filling up, add a small amount of Woolite Extra Delicate care to the bathtub. What "a small amount" means is completely up to you.
15. Take the bodysuit and CAREFULLY turn it inside out, making sure not to rip off any fur fibers
16. Once the bathtub is full of cold, sudsy water, drop your bodysuit into the bath
17. Using your hands, CAREFULLY move around the bodysuit in the water to help the soapy water get into every corner. Try not to rip off any fur
18. Try not to think too hard about the fact that you're sticking your hands in a detergent solution that explicitly warns you not to get any on your skin.
19. After shaking your suit around in the water for a while, you can stop. Optionally, you may leave it to soak in the tub for a short amount of time. Should you? It is a mystery.
20. Unplug the drain and watch the soapy water drain out. You'll have to move your suit out of the way to let the water drain properly. This takes a while.
21. Try not to feel bad about all the fur you'll see go into the drain (spoilers: this is impossible)
22. Once all the water has drained out, re-plug the bathtub drain.
23. Re-fill the bathtub with cold water, but this time don't add any Woolite.
24. Again, gently move your suit around in the water to get all the soap out.
25. You can let it soak if you feel like it.
26. Unplug the drain (again) and watch the clean water drain out (again). You'll have to move your suit out of the way to let the water drain properly (again). This takes a while (again).
27. Gently compress the suit using your hands in order to squeeze out the excess water.
28. Leave it there for a while while the water slowly seeps out.
29. Come back and re-position the suit (GENTLY) on the side of the bathtub so that gravity will work to pull water out of the suit.
30. Leave it there for a while again. If you try to hang your suit while it is still soaking wet, you will most likely cause permanent damage to it.
31. Squeeze some water out of the extremities of the arms and legs.
32. Re-position it a bit higher to let it drain more. Having a specialized dryer is helpful for this - I don't have one but I should get one.
33. Wait some more.
34. Find a spot where you can hang a wet fursuit to dry. This is harder than it sounds. You cannot hang it outside on a clothesline - sunlight damages the suit and you run the risk of it getting stolen. The bodysuit is incredibly tall and you don't want the legs sitting on the ground, so most locations are too low. A wet fursuit still holds a ton of water, so hanging it off a door and leaving a towel underneath is not viable.
35. What I settled on personally was hanging it off the showerhead. Water drips into the bathtub which is convenient, but I still worry the showerhead will break off one day.
36. Leave the fursuit to dry there until your roommates hate you.
37. Build an improvised fursuit drying station: you will need a chair, a cardboard box, an extension cord, a large fan, a clotheshanger, a tall door and a dry towel.
38. Put the chair in front of the tall door
39. Balance the fan on top of the chair and point it towards the door
40. Plug the fan into the extension cord and the extension cord into the nearest power outlet.
41. Block the door from moving using the cardboard box
42. Put the dry towel at the base of the door to catch any dripping water
43. Take the damp fursuit and take it to your improvised fursuit drying station.
44. Your fursuit is now mostly dry and is being fanned to get all the moisture out.
45. Leave it there overnight and pray your roommates don't spill food on it as they walk past your improvised fursuit drying station.
Cleaning the handpaws (this is the easiest part)
46. Plug the sink drain
47. Fill up the sink with cold water
48. While the sink is filling up, add a tiny amount of Woolite Extra Delicate care to the sink. What "a tiny amount" means is completely up to you.
49. Once the sink is full of cold, sudsy water, drop your handpaws into the sink. You can't turn most handpaws inside out.
50. Using your hands, CAREFULLY move around the handpaws in the water to help the soapy water get into every corner. Try not to rip off any fur
51. Try not to think too hard about the fact that you're sticking your hands in a detergent solution that explicitly warns you not to get any on your skin.
52. After shaking your handpaws around in the water for a while, you can stop. Optionally, you may leave them to soak in the sink for a short amount of time. Should you? It is a mystery.
53. Unplug the drain and watch the soapy water drain out.
54. Once all the water has drained out, re-plug the sink drain.
55. Re-fill the sink with cold water, but this time don't add any Woolite.
56. Again, gently move your handpaws around in the water to get all the soap out.
57. You can let it soak if you feel like it.
58. Unplug the drain (again) and watch the clean water drain out (again).
59. Gently compress the fingers of your handpaws using your hands in order to squeeze out the excess water.
60. Leave the handpaws there for a while while the water slowly seeps out.
61. Handpaws soak up a lot less water than your suit, so drying them is much simpler. You can pull them up and let them hang vertically without too much fear of damaging them, as long as they're not exceedingly wet.
62. After your handpaws have dripped for a while, pick them up one by one, give the fingers one last squeeze and go lay them to rest on a horizontal portable fan.
63. Leave your handpaws on the fan overnight.
Cleaning the tail
64. Lay the tail on a long, clean surface. I use my bed.
65. Gently brush the length of the tail (all six feet of it) using the reverse side of a slicker brush.
66. Feel bad every time you hand to remove a huge chunk of fur from the slicker brush which is supposed to not pull fur out.
67. Flip the tail around and brush the other side (this takes a while)
68. As you brush, throw away whatever gunk or pieces of dead vegetation your tail has picked up since your last outing.
69. Silently envy all the fursuiters who went with a tail of reasonable size.
70. Lovingly caress the length of your now freshly-fluffed soft tail with your hands. You may optionally hug it.
Storing the tail
71. Look around your apartment for a place to hang a 6' tall tube of fur.
72. Look for portmanteaus that go higher than 6' (spoilers: there are none)
73. Make plans to install hooks on the ceiling
74. Improvise a tail hanging station: first, strap the belt into the tail
75. Loop the belt around a heavy cardboard box which is resting on top of one of your cupboards next to your bed.
76. Admire your ingenuity as the tail spans nearly from the ceiling to the floor
77. Cover up the tail with an improvised tarp made from tape and garbage bags
Head maintenance
78. Pull the batteries out of the fan battery pack
79. Hook up the batteries to a battery recharger
80. Hit the inside of the head with a few shots of Lysol to disinfect it
81. Pull out the scraps of fur stuck inside the head's zipper. You may need to apply force - you may need to apply scissors. You may feel terrible.
82. Brush the fur on one side of the head
83. Awkwardly attempt to avoid undoing your work as you try to rest the head on its brushed side to brush the other side.
84. Attempt to brush the airbrushed bits of fur on the head. Airbrushed fur tends to be stiff and matted - brushing it is extremely awkward and near futile.
85. Wait a few hours for the batteries to recharge, then stick them back into the fan battery pack
86. Struggle to close the battery pack, which is crammed inside a chunk of foam and behind a sheet of fur
87. Re-line the cloth bag with bubble wrap
88. Put the head back inside the cloth bag and leave it wherever.
Footpaw maintenance
89. Lament the sorry state of your footpaws. If you go suiting outside like I do, your footpaws will end up dirty and damaged after every session.
90. Pull out the chunks of grime and dead vegetation from your footpaws
91. Wipe the fur back into place using your hands.
92. Hit the inside of each footpaw with a bit of Lysol to disinfect them.
93. Get your bottle of Folex and spray every stain with it
94. Scrub the stains with your hand to get the cleaning product in there
95. Get a clean rag, rinse it in cold water and wipe off the Folex.
96. Leave your footpaw to dry on a running horizontal fan.
97. Repeat steps 92 through 96 for both footpaws until the stains have disappeared or until your standards for cleanliness are lowered.
98. Take note of the tendency for Folex to leave behind a nasty sticky residue that turns fur into an ugly clump of dirt which you have to rip out.
99. Brush your footpaws to the best of your ability
100. Store each footpaw in an individual plastic bag. Leave the bags wherever.
Next morning
101. Your handpaws should now be dry. Brush them and put them away.
102. Your bodysuit should be mostly dry. Turn it inside out again, GENTLY without ripping out fur
103. Brush your bodysuit. This is a lengthy undertaking.
104. Lament the matting of the fur where you sweat the most: your armpits, crotch and ass. The fur in those locations will NEVER look nice.
105. Store your bodysuit. I hang it off the belt holding the tail and cover it with a garbage-bag-tape-tarp.
106. Your suit is now fully clean! Congratulations. Swear off fursuiting forever, until your brain forgets all the work it just took to clean it and goes "Hey, I should go walk around town in suit, it'll be fun!"
As I write this, I've finished steps 1 through 88, I'm waiting for my bodysuit to dry off so I can move it to my fursuit drying station and I'm dreading having to clean my footpaws, which I'll most likely push off to tomorrow.
My last fursuiting session was a relatively short one, and I thought I could get away with not washing the whole thing. One whiff of my bodysuit as I took it out of its suitcase told me how wrong I was.
So, the next time you hug a fursuiter, if their fur feels nice and soft and smells good, know that it took a lot of work to get it that way. Hold them close and whisper tenderly into their ear: "you smell sooooo goooood..." * A normal person might find that creepy, but I'd take it as a badge of pride for my fursuit cleaning discipline.
* Note: please don't actually do this. Thanks.
Some resources:
http://forums.furtopia.org/kobuk�.....care-tutorial/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEY.....GAAW8tT51AYSjK
shock (about all the work)
pity (about all the work you and others had to go through)
gratefulness (about all the work you and others had to go through to make fursuits nice and huggable)
... and the fact that I will probably end up doing the very same at some point down the road XD
Thanks for writing this very detailed and informative journal!
you should write a book/how to guide on fursuiting and maintenance and publish it in ebook format! :D
For the bodysuit, I take a "better safe than sorry" approach - I'd rather spend the extra time completely washing it and making sure it's fully clean, rather than going for a half-measure and just spraying it down. If I sweated through the suit and soaked the fur with my sweat, I'm washing it.
There's also the fact that my maker recommended to me to me avoid detergents containing alcohol, so I didn't go for the alcohol solution spray.
Note that I don't fully wash it after every outing - if I'm just going for a short 15 minute suiting session and I don't sweat through my undersuit, I usually won't bother washing it. I'll just hang it, point a fan at it and leave it to rest.
Picking up a freezer seems overkill - my current routine works well enough for me. Although if you do try it, tell me how it works out for you!
Now I do not know the terms in english, but ill try.
Delicate spin cycle a kind of wool program or something. Low heat program or whatever you have.
I used a LIL bit of fabic softener to get a nice smell but not Much at all. And afeter it was done I took it on a 5 min centrifuge thingy. (That cycle that just makes the thingy spin superfast to throw out water from the fabric) Worked fine on both paws (With claws!) And on my body.
Some feetpaws are made in a way so one can do the ame with em too. I think that's mostly for indoor paws and since mine are indoors I don't do that.
But if I ever get another pair of feetpaws I will try to do it with my old ones.
However, I don't like the idea of using Lysol to disinfect a head just because of all the nasty chemicals (ew) -and they actually build up over time. My recommendation is after every suiting session where you break a sweat, to spray the (insideout)body, hands, feet, and head AVOIDING THE EYES with a mix of water and 90% isopropyl alcohol. It dries fast, doesn't leave chemical residue or scents. in general fursuits shouldn't be washed after EVERY use - just after a convention or when you notice that it's getting a bit funky smelling even after an alcohol spray.
[again, that's just how i do it, I learned everything i know from my friends who have been suiting longer than me!]