Spring Cleaning for Ballroom Dancers

It may be Autumn here in Sydney, but when Easter weekend rolls around it always feels like Spring - must be all the pastels. Seeing as we’re all at home, and eager for projects, now might be the perfect time to organise all your ballroom dancing bits and bobs. After years of dancing, acquiring more stuff than I can fit in my wardrobe, with a partner who has scout badges for organising - here’s my list of ideas on how to spring clean, re-organise and give a little love to your ballroom collection.

How to Wash Ballroom Costumes

For ladies:

First fun fact is more preventative but good to know - you should use hand sanitiser along with your deodorant when wearing dance costumes! It does a much better job at preventing odour and bacteria and will make washing them a lot easier. So you’ll have another use for all that hand sanitiser you’ve stocked up on after all this.

Now, when washing, if your dresses have any fragile materials like feathers or delicate fringing that may unravel, its a good idea to put a plastic bag around them and tie off with a rubber band to prevent those sections from getting wet.

If you have any super stubborn stains from tanner, you can use a colour-safe carpet stain remover. I would usually do a test first before using any new product, then leave it on for 30 minutes before washing - should work like a charm.

Then go ahead and fill up your (cleaned) sink or bathtub, depending on the size of the dress with lukewarm water and a delicate fabric wash. If the water turns brown with tanner, drain and refill as many times as needed to get the water to a foggy white colour, re-adding you fabric wash and pumping the costume in your hands along the way. Try to leave your fragile sections off to the side as much as possible. Then drain the sink and wring the dress to get most of the water out.

After washing, lie flat on a dry towel and roll it up to absorb more of the water and heaviness, before hanging it up to finish drying on a hanger. YAY you did it!

Although this is the safest way, you still may lose a few rhinestones along the way. It’s always a good idea to have a few spare to restore as needed after washing your dresses.

For gents:

Unless your garments are rhinestoned like most ladies dresses, you have a much simpler task! All you need to do is drop off your dance wear at a dry cleaner and Bob’s your uncle, you’re ready for another Showcase!

Organising Dance Wear

Ideally, your dance clothes will live in a garment bag in your closet. For ladies, one dress per hanger is best but for heavily stoned dresses its better to fold them over the hanger in half so you don’t stretch out the top.

For gents, use one hanger per style (Smooth, Country, Specialty, Rhythm) and make sure they’re clean and fully dry before you hang them in the garment bag!

If you’re like me and don’t have space for all your ballroom wear in your wardrobe, then you can pack them into a suitcase. I organise mine into one style per garment bag, with a silica gel packet inside of each to keep them fresh. Lie the garment bags on top of each other and then fold the lot in half to pack - this minimises wrinkling. Usually by doing this, I just need to hang a dress in the bathroom when having a shower before the comp and the steam is enough to get rid of any wrinkles.

Bits and Bobs

It’s best to keep your ballroom things separated into seperate small bags.

For ladies:

1 x comp make up - bright eyeshadows, eyelashes, glitter.
1 x hair - hairspray, bobby pins, hairpieces, donuts.
1 x nails and tanner - polish, remover, clear polish, tanner, applicator.
1 x practical things - safety pins, superglue, small sewing kit, small mirror.

For gents:

1 x accessories - cufflinks, tie clips, pocket squares, ties.
1 x hair - hair product, comb, shaving kit/beard balm, tanner.
1 x practical things - black safety pins, shoe polish, superglue, multitool, shoelaces.

Let’s Talk Shoes

If you’re doing a fair few events, its nice to have dance shoes you wear specifically for comps. Once they get too worn, they get promoted to practice shoes and taken out of your comp gear bags. (Yay, excuse to buy new shoes!)

It’s always a good idea to keep odour eaters in your shoe bags to prevent any unpleasantness. Also best to keep them seperate from other pairs in boxes or bags with or near your other dance gear.

You can also jazz up your shoes with rhinestones and even add matching colours to your favourite dress!

Heel caps are also a fantastic idea for expanding the life of your dance shoes, so order some online and add them/replace them on all your shoes. A trick for those is to put them in hot water before trying to fit them to your heels, makes the whole process MUCH easier.

Your well-loved practice shoes may look a little worn around the edges but that just shows how much you’re practicing! If the fabric wears off between the heels where you’ve been doing such a great job brushing, you can hide that with a bit of tanner to match in with the tan colour of most dance shoes.

Happy Cleaning

Hope those tips and tricks are helpful, if you have any tips of your own please leave them in the comments. We love getting new ideas. Happy Easter all and good luck with your spring cleaning!