How to Clean Shop / Garage Gloves

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How To Clean Your Shop Gloves

Shop gloves are a great thing to have around so you aren't cutting up your hands or getting them covered in dirt and grease. But all the gunk the gloves collect seems to keep accumulating until they are too gross to be effective anymore. It's never satisfying to pull your hand out of a work glove and still have your hands covered in grime. Replacing these shop gloves usually cost about $15-25, but luckily we have found a way to clean them in a fairly cheap and easy way so you can save money and keep these gloves lasting longer. 

Let me start with a suggestion. Don't use a washing machine. If you put greasy or oil shop gloves in a washing machine you will be spreading a fair amount of that filth throughout the clothes in your next wash. 

The real problem areas when trying to clean shop gloves are areas with fresh oil and areas with thick grease. We tried a few cleaning methods and only 1 was effective enough to fight through these spots and clean the gloves well enough for our standards. 

The Secret: Mechanics Detergent

Fast orange makes a grease-fighting detergent specifically formulated for auto mechanics. While I have rarely used this for my laundry, I have found that its the best way by far of cleaning shop gloves. So, can you just use this detergent and toss the gloves in the washing machine? Still a no. While this detergent is powerful, the washing machine was still left coated with a film of grease when we tried this method.

Cleaning Your Shop Gloves 

Step 1: Prepare the Wash Bucket

Find a bucket to wash your gloves in, and add one cap-full of detergent. We used a 5-gallon bucket because it was readily available, but feel free to use whatever you like. A grit guard for car washing is also a good idea if you have one available, as this will trap many of the contaminants in the bottom of the bucket and prevent you from doing extra work. Fill the bucket with warm/hot water. We are pouring the water after the detergent to make sure it mixes thoroughly. 

Step 2: Be Patient

Let the gloves soak in the solution for 20-30 minutes, ideally in the sun. We want the water to still be as warm as possible when we come back to scrub the gloves, and the sun will help accomplish this.
You should also stir the gloves every 5 minutes or so as this will allow the detergent to penetrate the grease better. Here you can see me stirring the bucket with a bush handle. 

During this time, go find a shop rag to use as a sort of sponge against the gloves. 

Step 3: Get to Scrubbing

These gloves are not going to clean themselves, so start scrubbing. In our first test, we washed the gloves against each other, hoping this would knock the grease and gunk loose, but we had limited success. While this method worked fine for the loose dirt, the oil and grease remained after the wash. In our next test, we used a shop rag to scrub against the gloves, and this worked much better. As the rag is absorbing the detergent solution it is very effective at clearing away the thicker grease spots, and it cleans fresh oil right off the gloves as well. You should be prepared to spend about 4-5 minutes scrubbing each pair of gloves thoroughly while submerged in the solution. When your wash bucket starts looking gross, it means you are making progress!

Step 4: Rinse and Dry

Once you finish scrubbing hose down the gloves to rinse them off and leave them to dry. My gloves took about 2 days to dry with no sun exposure, at which point they looked great. No more grease and oil left on the gloves, and no gross hands after using them either. I'm stoked with how well the detergent worked out, so I will definitely be using it in the future. If you'd like to pick some up you can stop at O'reillys auto parts or pick it up on Amazon for about $15.

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