Bag Your Style, Fashion as well

1, Cloth, leather and flannel bag maintenance
2, Detailed ways to maintain the genuine leather bags
3, Some tips on maintaining your bag
4, Clean your bag’s dead corner
5, Hardware and leather handle maintenance

Common Sense of Bag Maintenance

Nowadays, when fashion and trend are full of streets, bag becomes a very important single accessary for us. In this condition, taking good care of our bags seems to be more and more essential. Even those famous brand bags, damage is not avoidable. Therefore, today I will share some methods on bag maintenance, may it will be helpful for you.

Cloth bag maintenance
The cloth bags’ fabric usually are canvas, denim and cotton, linings are usually made of nylon and cotton. In general, cloth bags can be washing or dry-cleaning, but for some fabric bags, which, with many stripes or colors are very bright, dry cleaning is the prefered method, otherwise they will fade.

When clean cloth bag, you need prepare some water which has added little washing-up liquid in, then use small velvet brush dip in the water, brush lightly along the cloth veins. For most of cloth bags’ cleaning, use small velvet brush to clean dust frequently is enough, besides this, in order to keep their shape pretty, some bags need ironing.

Key points for cloth bag:

When cleaning: Soak in saline for 15 minutes; use soap and velvet brush wash or hand wash separately; iron at medium setting.

Note: If there is leather part on cloth bag, do not soak, no direct sunlight; remove movable accessories before cleaning.

Leather bag maintenance
Leather bags are mainly made of cowhide, sheepskin, pigskin, PVC, chamois-leather and other materials. Relatively high quality bag usually has its maintaining instructions enclosed. If there isn’t, don’t worry, noting the following key points is enough, remember, these tips are for leather bag.

1. In general, leather bags require occasional cleaning and frequently oiled.

Concrete method: smear maintenance oil on a piece of clean cotton first, then use it wipe bag surface evenly. Pay attention, in order to avoid damaging the leather, you need avoid swearing the oil on the leather directly, especially pay attention to avoid damage made by those chemicals. For those hard leather bags, you should avoid hard and sharp obejects scratching on them.

2. Leather has strong absorb power, espeacially high-grade frosted leather, pay attention to antifouling.

3. Soak a dry towel in water, then wring it out, use it wipe the bag for several times, do this once a week.

4. If leather is dirty, use a wet sponge soaks in mild wash-up liquid, then use it wipe the leather, let it dry naturally. Check this method on little plain part before use it formally.

5. When leather stained with grease, use a piece of clean cotton wipe the grease out, if there is remains, let it disperse naturally or clean with washing-up liquid. Do not wash with water.

6. Hardware maintenance on leather: use a dry cloth to wipe them after use. If hardware oxidized, try rub them with flour or toothpaste.

7. Enamelled leather’s luster is great and it’s not easy to adsorb dust, so rub it with a piece of soft cloth is a proper way for enamelled leather bag.

8. Shiny leather bag, rub with a piece of soft cloth dipped a little special maintenance oil, then rub harder on leather.

9. Mat leather, usually just need rub with cloth lightly, if it’s very dirty, try to wipe the dirty part with eraser-like rubber.

10. The natural oil in the leather will reduce with the passage of time or use too much, so even those high-grade leather goods should be maintained on regular basis.

11. If leahter get blotchy or black spots on it, try use a same-colored leather soak with alcohol, then rub the leather with it.

When chamois-leather bag getting dirty, the blotchy can be eraser out directly. When maintain, use velvet brush brush along the fur, until it’s getting flat.

Flannel bag maintenance
First, wash the bag with the regular method, then wash the flannel part again with mild liquid soap; when dry in air, put the flannel part upward; if meet rainy weather, it’s better to use dryer.

PS: When clean the flannel part, use mild liquid soap or mild washing-up liquid is ok, but because collar cleaner can keep color from fading and can clean the flannel more thoroughly, so collar cleaner is a better choice.

For genuine leather bag: more detailed ways to keep your genuine leather bags in a good condition

1. Genuine leather bags should be sent to maintenance shop regularly to have thorough cleaning and sterilization. Due to specialized facilities add mold-removing and sterilization medicine into water during the process of cleaning, they can help you get rid of bacteria and mold.

2. Getting drenched in the rain or affected with damp may cause bags become moldy, under this condition, use a piece of dry cloth wipe the stain and mold is a proper way. But never use water and gasoline, because gasoling may harden leather, gasoline will evaporate the oil in leather make it chapped.

3. When not in use, put all things in bag out, remove the dust, wipe gently, in order to avoid bag getting out of shape, you’d better fill it with paper, then hang it up.

4. Make sure the genuine bag has been thoroughly cleaned before being stored, because it’s very important to keep bag’s shape and prolong its service life. Do remember dry it in a shade for a while before store. In order to keep leather’s color and luster beautiful, we can coat a layer of milk or glycerol on it, which can help avoid color change in the long-term storage.

5. Pay close attention to protect all hardware and zippers, do your best to prevent oxidation. 

Tips on bag maintenance

1. Careful use. Treasuring is the key point for bag maintenance. In fact, bags are so easily get damaged, for example, being scratched, getting drenched in the rain or being smudged, all these are fatal conditions for bags. If you want to maintain your bag, start from its daily life using, don’t even think about wait until problems come up to you.

2. Daily care. When not in use, put some clean soft cloth or spitballs in bag, this can prevent bag out of shape, then put bag in a soft cotton bag. If it’s leather bag, in order to keep of dust, you need to polish it with special wax occasionally.

3. Clean dirt. When contact with external environment, bag will inevitably stained with dust. When your bag gets dirt, moisten a clean soft cloth with a little egg white, then use it wipe dirt, you will find you have removed those annoying dirt. If your bag’s use environment is damp and leather getting moldy, in this condition, you need to buy a little special oil then wipe your bag with the oil, furthermore, coat leather with same-color oil, after thses done, your bag will be recovered.

4. Attentive store. Things have their idle period, bag is no exception. When not in use, store methods become important. The cabinet store you bag must keep well ventilated, those with blinds are good choice.
In addition, the inner space of cabinet can not be too narrow, ventilation is needed, because bag also need to “breathe”.

How to clean the bag’s dead corner

Usually when cleaning a bag, the bag’s front, the back, and the strap are easy to clean. However, you may notice that some places of the bag are hard to clean, for example, the seams of the bag and the lining corners.

Here are some methods that i use to clean these dead corners.

First, install a tiny intake port in your cleaner, then clean the dust in lining corners, on metal clips….with the cleaner, finally you can use a cotton swab or a toothpick rolled with tissue to wipe these parts.

Hardware and leather handle maintenance

For your bag, the maintenance of bag’s hardware is also important, here are some ways to keep your bag’s hardware in a good condition.

For metal zippers and buckles, usually speaking, to make sure them in good condition, keep them dry is enough. If get rust marks, use silver polishing cloth wipe the marks(Note: no matter how black the silver polishing cloth becomes during uasage, never wash it! Because there is a layer of special coating on its surface, if you wash it, the special coating will fall away.) Because zippers are frequently in use, so they are hard to become rusty. For golden locks, rubbing with silver polishing cloth is a good way. If the silver polishing cloth is too black to rub, use a piece of clean cotton cloth moistened tung oil, silver harware can also be maintained in this way.(Or you can use a piece of clean cloth dipped with baby powder rub them. If hardware oxidized seriously, rub them harder. This will also be a good method.)

Due to being held in hand often, pillow series genuine leather handle is mostly easy to get dirty. Here is the way I learned from others(I have tried it, useful.):

Prepare a wet towel(as soft as possible, not too hard), a tube of toothpaste(common one is OK, don’t use these contain grinding pellets) and a hair dryer. First, squeeze the toothpaste on the towel, apply them evenly, then rub the dirty part with this towel. During rubbing, you will find the leather handle will become black, don’t worry, it’s the result the leather moistened water. Then use the rest part of towel, which without toothpaste, wipe the toothpaste on leather handle away, after use hair dryer dry the handle, you will find the handle becomes more white immediately. Of course, dry in the sun is OK, too.

We should pay attention here, the towel must be soft, if it’s too hard, it may scratch the matching hide. But after clean the handle in this way, the leather in handle part will become relatively drier. So in order to help those pores get closed, you need to wear a pair of white gloves and rub the leather with your hands after cleaning.

In fact, on the basis of through cleaning, the best maintenance for leather bags is not oiling, but frequently touching, use your hands polishing.:)

In addition, in case the handle is too dirty that needs high-degree cleaning, you can try 3M cleaning fluid, the effect is not bad. Moreover, 3M cleaning fluid is easy to get, you can find it in almost every supermarket. But do remember one thing, the fluid must be those special for leather and must be use with cloth. When clean handle, spray the cleaning fluid on the soft cloth(or white cotton gloves)first, then use the cloth(or gloves) rub the handle, to those very dirty parts, rub harder, but don’t use too much fluid or rub too harder, otherwise leather’s color will change, become a little gray, and when in use the handle will become much black, but don’t worry too much, due to 3M is a volatile product, after it evaperated. Leather’s color will return.

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