How to Make Fire-Retardant Clothing

Making your child's clothing fire-retardant affords an extra measure of safety. With some simple ingredients, you can make nearly anything safer from fire. This article will show you how to make a bath to soak clothing in that imparts flame-retardant properties to the fabric, but you can also put this solution into a spray bottle to apply to furniture, curtains, household fabrics and other things around the house.

Things You'll Need

• Five-gallon bucket
• Borax (20 Mule Team brand is most common and works)
• Water
• Boric acid
• Paint stir stick
• Spray bottle (optional)

Instructions

1. Pour one gallon of water into the five-gallon bucket.

2. Add nine ounces of borax to the water.

3. Add four ounces of boric acid to the water.

4. Stir the water with the paint stir stick until it is well mixed.

5. Soak the clothing in the water, or spray the solution onto objects that cannot be immersed.

6. Allow the items to dry as usual. With no further treatment, the clothing is ready for normal (and safer) wear.

Tips & Warnings

• If you wash the clothing, the flame-retardant properties will be lost, so you will have to repeat this process each time you launder the clothing.

References

• Making clothing flame-retardant