This week is going to be a little quiet around here because of back-to-school festivities and prep, but I wanted to share something that I tried out the other day that saved me from having to purchase all new towels. I was able to restore my old, cruddy, and mildew-stink towels to almost brand new!
For the most part I LOVE our high efficiency (HE) washer and dryer, but one thing I dislike very much about them is the smell they can sometimes leave on our clothing, towels, sheets, and comforters…
I’m very diligent about taking care of the machines. Cleaning them out the way they are supposed to and following all care instructions to a tee, but that funky smell that these machines leave behind on your laundry is inevitable. I’ve tried “homemade” recipes, and concoctions to try out to see if it helped, but nothing really did the trick well enough for me to continue on. Another thing that I realized was the lack of help online for people who owned HE machines. Most, if not all homemade laundry soaps and such are for the standard washers, which just doesn’t work the same for an HE washer.
So after I showed you all how I organized our linen closet, and saw how bad a shape our towels were in I was on a quest to find a way to bring them back to life again, and I finally figured out the trick!
I wanted to test it out on the 3 worst towels we had and these were them. We’ve only had these for two years and look how gross they’ve gotten! These once white towels were now tinted grey and reeked of dirty water and mildew. I was planning to just throw all 20+ towels we had away and start over but I wanted to try and fix them first, and I’m so glad I did, because they are as good as new after this!
The first thing I did was put them in the bathtub and poured 3 cups of bleach into hot the hot running water and let them sit for an hour.
After the hour was up, I drained the water and wrung them until they were damp and threw them into the HE washer.
I threw one Tide POD into the basin with the towels, and where I usually put liquid detergent in the tray, instead I added 1/3 cup of white distilled vinegar.
Set the washer to the “towel” setting with warm/cold water cycle, and VOILA.
I could tell from the minute and opened the latch after the cycle that they were fixed. No more stench, they felt really soft and they were BRIGHT WHITE!
Have you ever tried using vinegar in your laundry? Had great results? I’d love to hear about it!
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Talk to you soon guys, take care!
XO
any idea how to do this for colored towels? I need to do this because I can’t get the smell out no matter how much I wash but they’re all non-white so I guess the bleach is out. :/
I don’t have colored towels, but maybe try the exact steps, just leave out the bleach, and replace it with more vinager. Let me know how it turns out!
For your towels, try filling a clean tub with HOT water (you may even consider boiling it) adding 1 cup of dawn, 2 cups baking soda and 2 cups hydrogen peroxide. Mix and let it soak over night. Wring them out and wash as normal.
I’ll try that! Thanks!
you might try Oxi Clean. It wouldn’t discolor the towels and usually works great for soaking things
Don’t they have Clorox for colors. Just a thought you might want to do two towels and see if it works.
I’ll check it out and see! Thanks!
Hi! I also use vinegar once in a while when washing my white load! Not Always, just once about every 6 weeks and I’m very happy with the results!
I have had some luck with removing the smell from my colored towels with Oxyclean powder with the green lid (fragrance free, etc.). So I am going to try to replace the bleach in hot water soak with the Oxyclean in hot water soak then the other steps with Tide pod and vinegar. Recommend test towel first. I have used vinegar in my laundry many times. Works pretty good. Using this how-to on my white towels ASAP. Sometimes use peroxide and baking soda to get smells out too. Soda sprinkled in the drum with pod, maybe 2 cups, then peroxide in the detergent slot. Has helped as well. Doesn’t fade anything. Peroxide great at getting out blood spots too, no fade.
Yay! Christine, I’m so going to do this for our towels. I too was thinking I should just throw our white towels out but now I’m going for it with your tip.
Quick ? – did the vinegar seem to help with that damp yuck smell the he washer tends to get? That would be an extra bonus
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I have issues with dingy mildew towels and have tried everything. I have heard you can soak them in the hottest water possible with regular detergent and vinegar (do not know the amount but I typically used almost a half a gallon). Soak for up to two hours then wash as usual. This helps “some.” For whites it’s obvious you can use a little bleach, but believe it or not for a lot of colored clothes too, you can use a little bleach (think about it city water contains some bleach!). I have pink, red, blue, purple, gray, and all sorts of colored towels and when they get to the point they don’t seem to come clean, I put in a couple capfuls of bleach in the dispenser along with putting the usual detergent and a few cups of vinegar in the washer tub, let them soak for about an hour on the hottest possible wash the fabric will allow, then wash as usual. This is the only method I have found to work. If you use too much bleach you will get bleach spots but when you mix in just a few capfuls along with a whole tub of water it shouldn’t do anything. The only draw back to this method is that colors tend to fade a little after repeating numerous times. People typically use Vinegar as a replacement for fabric softener. You add it to the tub along with the detergent, and the vinegar smell does go away and you end up having static free clothes.
I have an HE washer and was having tons of problems with my towels and heavy clothes, such as jeans. Eventually all the clothing started to smell. I switched to a homemade powdered detergent and we LOVE it. My clothes are clean, my washer smells clean every time! It is so inexpensive as well. When I need to use fabric softener I use vinegar, however I don’t normally need it because I added baking soda to my laundry soap.
I tried making my own soap and didn’t love it. Maybe I’ll try a different recipe and see, thanks for the advice! 🙂
If you ever need a recipe or anything else, feel free to email me sarah (at) sarahkathryn (dot) net
I read fabric softener should only be used for clothing, not towels. So I use vinegar instead and the towels no longer have that funky smell and are softer. It also cut down on the smell the machine sometimes has. When I clean machine, I sprinkle baking soda in the machine and some in the dispensing tray. Then add very little vinegar to tray, be careful, it fizzes up, and more inside machine to really cover the soda. Let it sit for 15-20 minutes and run the clean cycle…it will sparkle and smells fresh when you’re done!
Great tips Kelly! I’ll give your version a try soon and see how it turns out 🙂 Thanks!
I use about 1/4 cup vinegar when I was my jeans .
They stay blue a lot longer.
Be sure to turn them inside out before washing in cold water.
Hi Kelly! Your towels look great now! We have an HE washer and I make my own laundry soap AND I use vinegar in EVERY load. It softens and keeps the stinkies away! I find the washer doesn’t ask to be cleaned so often since I stopped using liquid store bought soap. Recipe is here: http://ourcloverhouse.blogspot.com/2012/09/diy-laundry-detergent.html THANKS for sharing!
I use Charlie’s Soap…it’s a detergent available as liquid or powder. Only takes 1 tablespoon, and I have no more problems with mildew stink. I rarely use vinegar in the rinse, and everything is fresh. The Charlie’s Soap keeps the machine from getting build up, along with the wash. I tried making soap with many recipes, but with our well water the clothes always got dingy after a while.
I use vinegar in my fabric softener cup with every load (except whites where I use bleach). Vinegar helps remove soap build – thus the dingy & musty smell. It helps to keep your washer lines clean – less mold and it helps to keep blacks blacker. The other additive I use is oxyclean. I use with most of my laundry. I presoak any laundry with organic stains (blood, grass, fruit, etc.). The other day I did a hot presoak of all my tea towels & dish clothes as they had begun to smell, probably because of going to the bin wet and sitting for days. They were as good as new. If you have an outside drying line – nothing smells better the laundry brought in off the line – why do you think laundry soap/softeners are on a quest to copy that smell. If fact I believe the chemical additives that soap/softeners bring to the was only exacerbate the stink situation. I helped a neighbor with her front loader that was molding up, so she was using a highly perfumed laundry soap to help cover the musty smell. She first thoroughly cleaned her machine. Ran a load with a couple of old towels, hot water and oxyclean, vinegar in the rinse to clean the machine. Then she then did her laundry with a basic unscented detergent, oxyclean and vinegar in the rinse – she was sold and her clothes were clean, cleaning smelling and not that horrible detergent chemical induced laundry soap smell.
I had a top loading HE washer and HATED it! It did not clean good at all. Kept it a couple years and bought another regular one. Much better. Would not recommend them. I will try the vinegar thing though.
I’m SHOCKED No1 has mentioned that if u mix Vinegar & Bleach, it gives off a Toxic fume that can/will Kill u!!! Just sayin…..
Yes…if you mix vinegar and bleach it’s toxic, but I didn’t mix them.
My front loader doesn’t have a “towel” setting, but does have a whitest white so I think I’ll try that. How did you wring them out? That’s the hard part! And also, did they come out soft and fluffy? That’s what I’m looking for! My towels are super old, certainly not only 2 years old! More like 10-15! (Some of them anyway!) I use vinegar regularly, instead of bleach. I never use bleach! I hate the stuff! It causes fabrics to break down. My mother in law uses it all the time on my father in law’s white socks. He always has holes in his socks!
After reading about all the people who use bleach, you’re crazy! Vinegar kills germs if that’s what you’re using it for and if it’s to get this white, oxyclean does that! I never use fabric softeners. Not in the wash or in the dryer. It’s just chemicals being put all over your clothes. That’s the other reason I use vinegar?! I have had my front loader for about 8 years now and yes, there are things I don’t like about it, like clothes getting so tangled in the wash, I haven’t had any problems with it other than that. If you want to soak things longer than your front loader will allow, just start your load and wait for it to fill up, then press the cancel button just so you can “add a garment”. Then don’t press start again. Wait an hour (or however long you need) and press start to get it going again! Hope all this is helpful. Sorry so long!