Been saving this onerous task for a while now hence the smelly down bag. Advice on whether you can successfully do this yourself is variable but I thought I would try with my lightweight bag rated -5C (23F). This bag weights about 600gms I think and it had started to lose it's warmth possibly due to dirt.

The down wash that I bought says you can use it to wash 1 and 2 season bags but 3 and 4 should be professionally cleaned. I guess this is down to you but this is how I got on. The whole process took maybe 4 or 5 hours including the trip to the launderette to use a tumble drier.

Step 1 I read the washing instructions on the down bag and then on the down wash bottle.

Next I put on long gloves and filled the bath up to about 100mm (4'') using hand warm water and then added 'down wash'. (i love the fact we still use feet and inches here, even though being Europeans we are not supposed to!)

Step 2 Taking a deep breath I dunked my bag in the bath. It floated! It took a lot of effort to push much of the air out and immerse the down. Eventually most of the bag seemed to be wet and the water turned a milky brown. Yuk. Guess that's what 100's of nights did to it.

  Here the bag does it's best to avoid being washed

Your bag should never resemble this - I always use a 100% waterproof pack liner

Step 3 Next job was to rinse the sucker out and it took maybe 8 washes to get to clear water. I don't think any water conservationists would be too keen on the amount of water it took to get that sucker clean. But it seemed to work. I found it pretty hard work to get the water out the bag when in maybe due to the pertex or similar type of material covering the bag.

Step 4 I put the bag in a bin liner and went to hang it in the garden. It looked the saddest sleeping bag I have ever seen hanging there dripping on the patio. Here I made a mistake by taking it too soon to the laundry. I think it may have helped to squeeze it out a bit or let it drain longer.

Step 5 I picked up a newspaper, some change and winged it to the laundry. Here i realised the bag was too wet to start tumbling and had to wring it out a bit. I have to admit I was worried at this point that it would ever resemble a decent bag again.

Step 6 After reading a whole paper and getting up to occasionally break up the lumps of down or feathers carefully my sleeping bag was once again back in the land of the living. I think there maybe some dampness in it so its been hanging upstairs for a few days and I may drop it down for another spin.

The result is pretty good. It smells clean and looks not like new but maybe newer than a well used thru hikers bag.