White sock are often preferred in summer as the light fabric will help keep your feet cool, but the downside is that quickly often lose their brightness even after just wearing them once. It is common for white socks to begin looking dull or dingy as the hot weather will make you sweat more, and the salt will stain the fabric.
It may seem obvious to just use bleach to whiten your socks but it will weaken the fibres in your socks over time to make thin out the fabric so making it more likely for you to get holes. If you overuse bleach on sweaty socks the chemicals can also begin to react to the body oils which can set the stains and even make them turn yellow instead of white.
Instead, the laundry experts at Sock Shop have shared a very simple way to get socks white again if to naturally brighten them with lemon juice.
They said: “You may have noticed already that lemon juice crops up time and again for its stain removal powers. This is because the acid found in lemons is antibacterial, antiseptic and acts as a natural bleach.”
It may seem bizarre, but lemon juice is a great laundry remedy as it contains citric acid, which can quickly break down stains and remove any dirt.
Citric acid can gently whiten socks without weakening the fabric or causing them to turn yellow. However, the best reason to use lemon juice is that the ultraviolet in sunlight naturally reacts to citric acid in lemon juice to also brighten white fabric.
If you wash white socks in lemon juice and then hang them out to dry in the sun, they will be not only be clean but look much whiter and brighter with hardly any effort.
How to get white socks cleaner and brighter
All you need is your bathtub, a sink a basin or a large bowl. Place your socks in the container, fill with warm water and then pour in a generous amount of lemon juice.
It is best to use fresh lemon juice that has recently been squeezed if you can as it will be a lot more potent if it comes from the fruit. Make sure your socks are submerged in the water and then simply leave them to soak for one to three hours
Once the time is up, rinse under a tap of cold water and squeeze them to get rid of the excess moisture so they are not dripping wet.
Then, simply hang them out to dry in direct sunlight and they should look a lot whiter and be completely stain-free once they are dry.
Lemon juice has antibacterial properties, but if you wish, you can then throw them in the washing machine and your white socks will look brand new all summer.
