Cleaning A Dirty Brahmin

For those of you who don't know, I love Brahmin handbags. They are beautiful, made in America & for a mid-price designer bag I think you get your money's worth as you can use one everyday for 10 years and it will still look good after heavy usage. Recently I purchased a used one on Poshmark for $40.00, pretty good buy, I think.

Brahmin, outside clean

 

But as you can tell by the picture the inside was dirty and needed cleaning.

Brahmin, inside dirty, needs cleaning

I had Clorox color safe bleach that came with a small finger brush and I also used Walmart hand soap to use to clean the inside of the wristlet.

Cleaning tools

The finger brush is small but mighty & with minimal pressure you can scrub/clean away stains. Please keep that in mind if you purchase one and use on delicate fabric the flexible scrubbies on the brush can cause more damage than you think so applying minimal pressure when cleaning is key to avoid pilling. As you can see I dispensed soap directly onto the bristles.

Applying soap directly to the cleaning tool

And then I started scrubbing. The inside of the Brahmin was a rougher surface so I used more pressure when scrubbing than I normally would have with say a, swimsuit. Again don't let that small cleaning brush fool you, it can really cause some damage to fabric if rubbed too vigorously.

Cleaning away

Below is half of one side of the wristlet done. Notice all of the red marks have been cleaned away in one corner.

                                                               Half way done on one side


Here I am doing the other side of the inside of the wristlet. This side went much faster as I was more confident as to what I was doing. The whole scrubbing didn't take more than 15-20 minutes.

Cleaning other side

When I was done cleaning, I ran the fabric part of the purse under the sink, not letting the leather be exposed to the water and letting the fabric lining part get really wet.

Carefully letting water run on fabric part of wristlet, only

When it was good & soaked, I rang out the water and soap from the fabric lining as best I could.

Squeezing out moisture

Keeping the liner outside the wristlet, it was hung out to dry.

Hanging on towel rack

After drying for 7 hours the Brahmin is restored and looking as good as new.

                                                                          Completely clean.