smelly dish towels and dish rags

dizzykates · July 2011

I wash my dish towels and dish clothes every two days. They then go through the dryer or get hung outside to dry. Nothing else I wash stinks and I wash them all together with my bath towels and white clothes.

What would do you think I can do to make them less stinky??

TIA

gbtc01 · July 2011

Have you tried washing them with a cup of vinegar? I know when some clothes had storm water back up onto them in our basement that was the only thing to get the smell out. If it can handle that level of mustiness I'm sure your dishtowels would be about the same.

ringom · July 2011

You could also try washing them with PineSol.

CDMay2006 · July 2011

Similar thread recently on the green living board might be of help to you: http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/55890436.aspx

sarahelisabethm · July 2011

I have dishcloths/dish towels made by Chlorox. They have blue stripes, but they are made not to fade and not to stink. You just wash them with bleach every time. I love them...I think they have them at Walmart for pretty cheap.

jen5-03 · July 2011

I save mine up for a week or two and don't get the stinks (I wash them seperately so I wait until I have a medium load), so how often you wash shouldn't be an issue.

I have a milk crate in the laundry room that is the hamper for dirty dish towels/rags, cleaning cloths and cloth napkins. If the towel is wet at all, I drape it over the side of the milk crate until it is completely dry. Generally I leave it hanging there until the next wet cloth comes along and then I just bump the first one in.

I would try using vinegar to get the stink out. I'd use it in the wash as well as in the rinse.

If that doesn't work I'd put in a quarter cup of bleach. I try to avoid bleach, but sometimes it's just the best option. A quarter cup in a large load should be enough to get out any bacteria but diluted enough that it shouldn't fade anything too much.

Life&Gwen · July 2011

It could be residual cooking oils, or other oils, that the soap doesn't dissolve entirely, and machine drying just bakes it further into the fibers, we had some luck with cooking oil coming all the way out with a castile (spelling?) soap, our house uses Kirk's, but it's an oil-based soap, so it gets oils out better than normal detergents. We just handwash the towels every month or so with that soap (aside from regular washing) this seemed to fix the olive-oil buildup smell for us.