The smell of mildew can be irritating and can make your bathroom seem unclean. If your bathroom doesn’t have a fan or if the towels were kept in the bottom of a hamper then the mildew smell can be overwhelming. Follow these steps and you can remove the mildew smell from towels.
Materials:
- Washing machine & dryer
- Hot water
- Vinegar
- Laundry soap
Steps:
- Separate mildew items from other laundry. There are plenty of degrees of mildew that can be problematic for your laundry and towels. Separate the smelly towels from all other items.
- Check for mildew stains. The towels may have just a smell or they may have stains from mold or mildew. Check for stains so you can pre-treat them with laundry soap if necessary.
- Wash towels in hot water cycle. Mix laundry soap and ½ cup of vinegar into the hot water while the machine is filling. Once the mix is diluted, load the towels into the washing machine. Run the full cycle.
- Check the towels at the end of the first cycle. The mildew smell and light staining should have been removed by the wash cycle. If a smell remains, move to the next step. If the towels are now clean, skip to step six.
- Wash the towels through a second cycle in the washing machine. For the second cycle use 1 cup of vinegar diluted in the wash with the laundry soap.
- Dry the towels in the dryer on the highest heat setting. Mildew grows in warm, humid areas which is why it is so happy in your bathroom and summer basement. The wash cycles will remove the odor but you cannot keep it away unless you dry the towels completely in a high heat dryer. Do not overload the dryer or the towels may remain damp in some sections.
- Remember to dry the towels after each use. If you live in a humid climate you should take extra care to have a fan running on the towels while they dry or just toss them in the dryer on a fluff cycle. Preventing the sour odor of mildew is much easier than trying to get rid of it once it takes over your bathroom.
These simple steps should have removed any mildew smell from your towels. Keep them smelling fresher, longer by keeping them dry between uses and storing clean towels outside of the bathroom or any other humid area.
Comments
Good tips especially in hot climate. I wonder if drying in the sun may help as well.
These are very good ideas for removing odors from towels when you are using a standard top loading washer. However, the new, high efficiency front loading washers have a unique problem of their own. Water stays trapped in the machine and mold and mildew can grow when the machine is not being used. If the machine sits too long the stuff gets out of control and ends up transfering to the laundry. You need to control the growth to eliminate the problem. Look for products like Affresh, Nu Fresh or Purewasher. These all claim to clean the washer and control the problem. Only Nu Fresh comes with an unconditional guarantee but it is also a little more expensive than the other two products.
Good Luck!
Cheap and easy. Tried commercial products, tried vinegar, tried hot water, cold water, borax. Couldn't get my two LARGE, thick, dark colored towels to lose the mildew smell my husband created when I was out of town for a week and the towels were piled wet on the floor. Then, I had a brain flash. When I was a child, my dad used to have to "treat" the dogs occassionally for smell, when they had an encounter with a skunk. We soaked them in tomato juice. So, what's to lose. I soaked both towels in 50% dilution tomato juice for 2 - 3 hours. Ran the wash cycle with the tomato juice, NO SOAP to be sure they were completely saturated. Then, rinsed a couple of times in cold water and dryed THOROUGHLY. Celebrate. Cheap and easy. It worked. The towels smell like new, even when wet.