10 Laundry Tricks Grandma Swore By, Checked: Vinegar for Towels and Salt for Jeans

Vinegar won’t make towels as fluffy as fabric softener, but it won’t make them less absorbent either. Testers at the consumer group CHOICE found vinegar softens less than commercial softener but doesn’t affect how towels absorb water. Stiff towels often come from hard-water residue, and a soak in white vinegar and warm water helps loosen it. Just never use vinegar in the same load as chlorine bleach: Poison Control warns the mix releases chlorine gas. One reader found vinegar was the only thing that worked:

“The answer to musty towels and washcloths is vinegar.”

After much experimentation, I have figured out that adding vinegar to the wash will finally get rid of the remaining musty smell that is hidden away in the towels and washcloths.

I have already tried hot water, extra long cycles, adding a pre-wash and a rinse, using a laundry booster in the pre-wash and none of this worked.

My successful attempt involved a large load of towels and washcloths with the correct number of soap pods, plus one cup of vinegar in the pre-wash cycle and two cups of vinegar in the wash cycle.

FYI I live in a humid climate so that is the source of the problem.

Baking soda neutralizes acid-based odors, and Utah State University Extension suggests up to a cup per load for sweaty smells. For odors that survive a normal wash, soak the items in baking soda and water, then wash them again. It is a mild deodorizer, not a disinfectant. A reader who forgot a load of towels in the washer for three days:

“Accidentally turned laundry day into a science experiment”

I threw a load of towels in the washer last week and forgot about them for three days. By the time I opened the door, the smell nearly knocked me out. I tried rewashing with extra detergent nope. Tried vinegar better, but still there.

Finally, I caved and googled around, someone suggested baking soda. One more wash and they actually smelled fresh again.

Honestly, I felt both relieved and embarrassed that I basically let my washer turn into a petri dish.

The fizz looks like cleaning power, but it is the two cancelling each other out. A chemistry lecturer writing in The Conversation explains that the reaction leaves mostly water, a weak salt called sodium acetate and carbon dioxide bubbles, and that sodium acetate is an even weaker base than baking soda, so it does little to clean.

The same article recommends using one or the other, depending on the job. If you want both in your laundry, put them in at different stages: baking soda with the detergent, vinegar in the rinse.

Iowa State University Extension calls it a common myth that washing clothes in vinegar or salt fixes the color. Salt helps dye soak into fibers at the factory, but it has no effect once dyeing is finished; if a salt soak seemed to work, the loose dye simply washed out.

An Oregon State University Extension guide adds that today’s dyes cannot be set by home methods, and that vinegar or salt may even cause more loss of color. What does help: wash new dark items separately the first few times, in cool water.

Long hours in the sun do have a mild bleaching effect, and a 2021 scientific review found that drying outdoors may reduce microorganisms thanks to UV rays. The catch: some fluorescent brighteners in white fabrics can turn yellow in prolonged sunlight, so bring the laundry in as soon as it is dry. Some families trusted the line more than any machine:

True story, my dad sent an electric dryer home to Trinidad for my grandmother in the 1980s, it was very expensive and difficult to get there. She wrote him that it was a huge blessing and thanked him. When he traveled back later in the year he discovered she had never plugged it in, she had just tied the clothes line to it. Nothing more. 😂

ENERGY STAR says heating water accounts for about 90 percent of the energy a washer uses, and that many households can do laundry with cold water alone. Consumer Reports’ testing found cold water gets clothes just as clean and can make them last longer than warm or hot water.

For extra-dirty clothes or very tough stains, though, use the warmest setting the fabric can take.

The American Cleaning Institute lists soap bars among pretreatments that work well on perspiration stains. Rub the bar gently into the damp collar, without harsh scrubbing, and put the shirt straight into the wash. The collar ring was famous long before anyone looked up the fix:

“Does anyone remember Ring Around the Collar ads?”

I grew up in 1970s and I remember ads on TV all the time for laundry detergent to remove “Ring around the Collar”. I assume we don’t have this problem any more or just don’t care. It is interesting to me that something so heavily advertised just disappeared..

According to my mother the cure was for that man to wash his neck.

In a lab test by CHOICE, none of four dryer-ball products had much effect on drying time in either kind of dryer, and one made drying slightly slower. Where they do help is with bulky things: two or three tennis balls or wool dryer balls in the drum help fluff up a comforter. CHOICE says it hasn’t tested the other common claim, softer clothes.

Vinegar does dissolve mineral deposits, as chemists point out. But Consumer Reports warns that vinegar can damage the rubber hoses and seals in a washer and even cause leaks, front-loaders especially. Some washer makers say the same, while others allow it in cleaning cycles, so check your machine’s manual before you pour.

Most fading comes from friction, hot water and dryer heat, so turn jeans wrong side out before washing to protect the face of the fabric, and skip the wash after a single wear.

In an informal test at the University of Alberta, jeans worn for 15 months without washing had about the same bacteria as two weeks after a wash, though the researcher doesn’t recommend waiting that long.