There was the pink stain from wet nail polish, the mascara smudges and a general grey tinge that was dulling their once brilliant white fibres. Fed up of seeing the towels come out of the wash not looking as good as they once did, it was time for me to try out a household hack.
On a lifestyle blog, Life Love Larson, the key for reviving white towels was revealed: combine baking soda and white vinegar to create a powerful cleaning powder solution to add to the wash. Delving into the specifics, the advice was to add one cup (the US measurement) of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda, to be exact) and one US cup of white vinegar.
Thankfully, the measuring jug I have does include the US measurements, making the process simple enough, but you can find the UK equivalent with a simple look on Google.
However, as I use my trusty white vinegar spray, it became a bit tedious to keep spraying the white vinegar in the measuring jug up to one UK cup (I did try to twist off the top of the spray bottle to quickly pour the white vinegar into the measuring jug, but it just couldn’t be done).
Having filled up the measuring jug with one cup of white vinegar (by continually spraying), I added the liquid to the fabric softener section in the washing machine drawer.
In the detergent compartment, I had added one cup of baking soda, while inside the drum were all my white stained towels.
The blog then recommended running the “longest and hottest” cycle on the washing machine; mine was a 90C wash for just under two hours.
No commercial washing-up powder was used in the washing machine so I was keen to find out how my towels would smell once the wash was done.
One thing I didn’t do, which was recommended in the blog, is to add about 10 drops of lavender essential oil in with the baking soda.
If I had the essential oil to hand, I would have done this step and, going forward, it’s worth adding the nice smell to the wash. After running the hot wash, and putting on a spin cycle, it was time to see if it really worked.
To my surprise, the towels came out of the wash looking much brighter and whiter than they had in a while. Plus, the mascara stains had completely been lifted. The pink stain is still there but it’s a lot less obvious. Now I’m curious to see if another hot wash like that (with baking soda and white vinegar) could remove the stain completely.
And, to note, there was no vinegar smell at all; in fact, the towels didn’t smell of anything.