Half a cup of white wine vinegar will remove stains and whitens your towels. You can always use the oxy-powders for whites as an alternative but vinegar is a lot cheaper and does the job too.
Hotels and laundries have a chemical called Potassium permanganate which is a very strong oxidizer that can kill everything and also remove stains effectively. So now you know how hotels manage to keep towels white.
Distilled white vinegar is a cheap and natural way to effectively remove stains or smells from your towels. A miracle worker in the laundry room and gentle on your fabrics, simply add one cup to your wash to remove yellowing, staining, mildew, and odors. This will leave your towels feeling soft and smelling fresh.
Take one gallon of water and combine one cup of baking soda to it. Add your white clothes and let them soak. Run your whites in the laundry as normal. After using baking soda, you should notice whiter, brighter, and fresh-smelling laundry.
If a brand of 100% cotton towels say “Do Not Bleach” for every color, even white, it is likely a way for the towel manufacturer to save money by using the same conservative care label on all of the towels in the product line, regardless of the towel's colorfastness to either chlorine or oxygen bleach.
White clothes can turn yellow due to a variety of factors, such as using too much detergent and fabric softener, oxygenation, deodorant stains, washing with well water or long-term storage.
Pour one cup of white vinegar into a bowl and add enough water to make a slurry. Soak the stained towel in the solution for about five minutes, and then rinse it off thoroughly with cool water. If the staining is more severe, try using hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, or dish soap (any type will work).
To remove the stains, make a paste of powdered detergent or laundry borax and water and work it into the stains. Let the paste sit for at least 15 minutes and then wash the towels in hot water.
If you regularly use too much detergent, your white towels will develop a dirty look due to excess detergent buildup. On the other hand, if you don't use enough detergent, your towels won't be adequately cleaned and could turn gray over time because of dirt buildup.
The Benefits of Using Vinegar in Laundry
There are many uses for vinegar in laundry, including stain removal, odor elimination, and mold and mildew eradication. Vinegar can also be used as an alternative to commercial fabric softeners.
If your towels' cleaning instructions indicate that you cannot use bleach, use baking soda or white vinegar instead. Add ½ cup of baking soda or ½ cup of white distilled vinegar to your washing machine, along with the laundry detergent. Make sure to add the white vinegar to the fabric softener dispenser.
Towels can turn yellow over time, depending on the frequency of use. Factors such as the sauce contaminated from your hands while cooking in the kitchen, sweat from your face or skin, dead skin spilled from the skin, oil on the skin or hair play a big role in the yellowing of the towels.
"Our research has shown that fabrics break down naturally over time just from machine washing and drying, and regular bleach usage along with detergent doesn't wear down fabrics significantly more than washing with detergent by itself."
Washing towels with vinegar and baking soda can bring them back to life in just three steps: Wash towels in hot water and one cup vinegar. Don't add any detergent. Wash the towels a second time (without drying them) in hot water and one cup baking soda.
Even so, for white towels you could try a pre-soak with ¼ cup Clorox® Regular Bleach2 per gallon of water. Let the towels soak for 5 minutes, then drain the soaking solution and run the towels through a hot wash cycle with detergent plus ¾ cup Clorox® Regular Bleach2 (or ½ cup Concentrated Clorox® Regular Bleach2.
The easiest and safest method to make whites white again is to use a solution of oxygen-based bleach and warm water. It can be used safely on almost all types of fabric. You can also make whites white again by using the ultraviolet rays of the sun or using laundry bluing, baking soda, vinegar, or chlorine bleach.
Wash white towels in hot water with ½ cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach2 per regular load. Or, try Clorox® UltimateCare® Bleach, the bleach you can pour directly onto whites. For colored towels, wash in hot water with detergent and Clorox 2® Stain Remover and Color Booster.
For an entire garment, make a weak solution of bleach and water and soak your items overnight. Wash as usual the next day, adding 1/2 cup vinegar to the load for extra color brightening power.
The staining is caused when splashes of hair care products get onto the clothing, or when you dry your hands on a towel without first washing off the residues of the hair care product.
Use Vinegar
Adding between half a cup and a cup of white distilled vinegar to each wash will help remove stains and whiten your towels: you can add it to the fabric-softener dispenser. Diluting one part vinegar in four parts water and spraying it directly onto stains is also a way of pretreating them.