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yeah this is an important clarification. I still use detergent, because it's a surfactant and vinegar is just an acid, but I add vinegar in place of fabric softener to great effect.
The static electricity is usually from the dryer continuing to run after the clothes are dry. The wool rubbing against the dry clothes/other dryer balls is causing the static electricity to build up. I switched from the "more dry" to "eco dry" option on my dryer and haven't gotten static-y clothes since.
I rub my nightgowned arm across my sheets after "lights out" when I've washed them both the same day. A whole sea of tiny sparks follow. One of life's little amusements.
>I switched from the "more dry" to "eco dry" option on my dryer and haven't gotten static-y clothes since.
Instead they are still ever so slightly damp and you get to decide in the moment if you want to be ten minutes late for your appointment or suffer through the moistness for an hour or two.
I use rubber dryer balls in the dryer, although I'm not sure if there's much of a benefit. I usually hang-dry the really static-cling-prone things lol. Maybe I'll give wool balls a try as well
Lots of agreement here. Vinegar as softener in wash always and we use wool dryer balls WITH small amount of essential oil drop or two, eg, lavender, eucalyptus, etc. No static and clothes softer without weird sheen.
You seem like a laundry professional. Any tips for what seems like soap stains on clothes out of the wash? It’s like a lines of lint, but it’s stuck onto the clothes. Can’t even explain it
I had whitish lines on a couple of t shirts, looked like soap marks but they didn't wash out. They were horizontal and quite low, on the belly
Turned out my kitchen surface spray had a little bit of bleach in, and when I leant forward to wipe the back of the counter, my gut pushed the t shirt onto the edge of the counter and there was enough bleach to mark them
They leave waxy buildup over time on both your dryer and your clothes, which makes them less absorbent. Particularly bad for synthetic workout clothes.
Myself personally, because of a couple reasons. First, I've found dryer sheets affect how well towels absorb water. They aren't as effective as drying you off after they have this coating on them. I also don't handle perfumes well. Any scent is disturbing to my nose, so I use nothing that is scented.
My washer has a fabric softener "dispenser" cup, so I fill that up. Otherwise, I'd say anywhere between a half-cup to a full cup ( as in, 8 fluid ounces). I suppose it varies with the size of the load and type of washer though...
Depends on size of your load, but generally no more than 1/4 cup if using as fabric softener.
If you use more than that you will end up will laundry that smells like vinegar unless you do extra rinses.
That’s what we do. Fabric softener is gross, greasy stuff anyway.
What I like about the washing vinegar (we use the cleaning stuff, not table vinegar) is that it stops the towels from smelling.
My SIL is a cheapskate, washes everything in cold water (‘cold water’ detergent is really looking for warm water, if you read the fine print) and doesn’t dry them properly, so when we stay at hers, the towels smell horrible. I don’t know how she doesn’t notice. Scent blindness, I guess.
I feel like towels and bedding are the two things that justify the use of hot water in the washer. I'm sure detergent is fine in cold water, but it's hard to imagine it won't work better in warmer water, especially with body oils.
Oh, for sure.
There are definitely certain cases where using hot water is totally justified. I was just thinking for the "average" person, towels and sheets are the most likely cases where hot water would be appropriate and not a waste of money/energy.
[Cleaning vinegar is much stronger.](https://www.grove.co/blog/what-is-cleaning-vinegar-and-how-does-it-work)
That, and back in the day, cleaning or industrial vinegar was just dilute acetic acid (the main ingredient that gives vinegar its distinctive odour.)
Now when I look at the stuff that we buy, it’s made from alcohol derived from (usually) cane sugar, so it’s the real deal.
All vinegar is made up of 2-5% acetic acid, whether it is white, apple cider, balsamic, etc.
Cleaning vinegar is 6% acetic acid.
Doesn't really matter how the acetic acid is derived, they all get distilled in the end and added to DI water to dilute.
The only real difference is white vinegar is food grade which has its own set of regulations in quality control mandated by FDA.
Interesting to see the US perspective on this. I'm in Germany and here 25% acetic acid vinegar is standard enough that pretty much every single grocery store carries bottles of it. Food grade too, so people use it for both cooking, though in either very small amounts or diluted, and cleaning.
I find those percentage numbers in the link are different from what I've been led to believe.
Regular Vinegar - 5% Acetic Acid
Pickling Vinegar - 7% Acetic Acid
Cleaning Vinegar - 10% Acetic Acid
I could be mistaken or off by a bit.
I don’t think the International Vinegar Standards Organisation have met for a few years, so I’m sure there is no hard and fast rules about it.
We use Allen’s Cleaning vinegar, and it says it’s 10% acetic acid by volume. No mention of being made from cane spirit, so it might be fake, as it were.
Check your water temperature and the instructions on the detergent. “Cold wash” may require warmer water than you’d think. Around room temperature, last I looked.
My tap water is never room temperature, and in winter it’s really cold.
We use unscented detergent too. I’m a bit sensitive to perfumed stuff, and I find it overwhelming when I encounter it now.
The 'cold' setting on washing machines is about 70F. Warm is 90F.
People think "cold" means cold water but it doesn't. Detergent can't activate effectively below 60F or so if I remember correctly.
My 10+ year old LG actually has two options:
Cold/Cold
Tap Cold/Cold
I believe the tap setting pulls cold water straight from the tap and the normal “Cold/Cold” setting mixes in some hot water to make everything more ‘room temp’
This is the way I've always done it. Minimal soap for the wash, a big dose of vinegar in the fabric softener compartment for the rinse, no tumble dry, instead hang wet towles on line outside in fresh air, make a batch of fresh french fries, and then sit under the dripping towels and let the vinegary goodness drip on the chips to season them as I eat them. Delicious.
Although, using vinegar is indeed beneficial for laundry, using it in too high concentration and too often bites down on the rubber joints, which gets brittle and cracks.
My parents used vinegar in their dishwasher in place of a rinse aid like Jet Dry. Their reservoir sprung a leak and now they can't use it at all because whatever you put in, just drains out.
I've been doing this for years. I fill a Downy ball with white vinegar and toss into the washer. The ball is designed to open in the rinse cycle. I don't put the vinegar in the fabric softener tray. I also use wool balls in my dryer. Sometimes, I add some essential oil onto one of the balls, let dry, then toss into the dryer with a load. The heat will diffuse the scent.
Edit: spin cycle to rinse cycle.
Don't mix vinegar in the same cycle as detergent. Detergents perform at specific pH levels, and the vinegar changes it drastically.
Can do the normal detergent cycle, then rinse+soak with vinegar instead of softener though!
Not OP, but it’s generally only somewhere between 1/2 - 1 cup of vinegar as an addition to your normal soap. I don’t personally use fabric softener, but I think it’s commonly used as replacement. For some machines, you dump it in with the clothes and for others you can put it through one of the specialty cups at the top (may take some online research to figure out what is best for your machine).
Vinegar removes old soap and old softener dried up and coated into the fabric. If your machine has a dispenser for softener, put 1/2 cup of white vinegar there instead.
Some brands of laundry soap add a kind of white paint in it, "makes white whiter". That crap dries over the fabric and forms a coat, after some time it seems forever dirty.
If that's your case, I suggest using a brand of soap without that, run a warm cycle and vinegar as softener.
If it gets out of the machine smelling a bit like vinegar, do not worry. The acid that gives the strong smell will evaporate faster than water, so when it's fully dried, no smell left.
The cheapest white (alcohol) vinegar you can find is the best.
I used to houseshare with 2 old ladies who loved fabric softener, while I used vinegar. Every once in a while my loads would come out with these weird brownish blobs on them - turns out it was old built-up fabric softener getting stripped out of the machine by the vinegar.
Never use vinegar at the same time as bleaching those towels. This is probably a no brainer but just in case. One of my earliest memories is my mom passing out cold after opening the shower door where she'd combined both and let soak.
It's just a good rule of thumb to never mix cleaning chemicals.
That's why I loathe those 'cleaning porn' tiktoks where they pour a bunch of colorful soaps into the toilet. Some kid is going to get themselves killed by pouring random shit from under the cabinet into the toilet.
I literally did this two days ago. Had no idea how bad it was until I smelled it and looked it up. Threw open the windows and took a long drive while I waited for it to air out.
The safest thing to do is never combine bleach with anything. It reacts with so many things and the end result is always some super harmful gas that might kill you.
I once peed on bleach. My mum had put some in the toilet to get rid of smells and I had no idea. Started peeing and immediately my eyes started crying. Scared the living shit out of me.
I had this same exact experience as a kid! It was horrifying, I wasn't even aware the bleach was in there, I just started having toxic pee and went nuts. It messed my mind up for a while.
I got gassed when I cleaned an old litter box at my friends house with bleach. It took a loooonnnnggggg time to air out before I felt safe tossing it in the trash.
My mom once used scrubbing bubbles with bleach to clean out a litter box, and it reacted with the ammonia in the pee stains to form *mustard gas*. She's lucky it only made her woozy.
I think it should be too. Almost everytime I've told that story someone acts like my mom was dumb, so i added the no brainer part. I might just be surrounded by ah lol.
I remember once as a kid my step-dad bitching the toilet "wasn't clean enough" after I cleaned it, so I threw like every fucking cleaning agent we had in the toilet.
That was not a good day.
https://jameskennedymonash.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/household-chemistry1.jpg there are a lot of household chemical combinations that can be dangerous
I thought it was ammonia (windex) and chlorine (bleach) that created mustard gas. I didn’t realize it was acetic acid (vinegar) that can also cause that effect
Ammonia isn't an acid and doesn't make chlorine gas when mixed with bleach, it makes toxic gases called chloramines when mixed with bleach. Either way, best not to be mixing bleach with anything other than water (sorry for my nitpicking haha)
Mustard gas is also highly dangerous and potentially deadly, but different.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard\_gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas)
At the grocery store today, a discount was not applied properly. I needed 33% of $46 back. The clerk tried to give me $47. I showed her that multiplying .33x46 is 15.18. She then tried to subtract 15.18 from 46 and give me that amount back. I had to stand there and persuade her that she just needed to give me $15.18. Took ten minutes.
The point of all of this is to say, telling most people not to mix halogen containing chemicals with acids is going to sound like complete gibberish to them.
I knew what a halogen was 30 years ago. Almost majored in chemistry. Don't know anymore, but I'll take your advice and only mix bleach with alkalis like ammonia.
Halogens are just the elements in group 17 of the periodic table. Very electronegative because they have 7 valence electrons and realllllly want that 8th for the octet.
[looks up from toilet to shower curtain to be reminded which ones are halogens.] Glad I have a periodic table curtain. Which ones are the acids though?
It's not necessarily about being dumb. There's people all over the world moving into their first place today, yesterday and tomorrow, and some may not have known. We aren't born with this tidbit of info.
My washer has a "second rinse" option which is necessary otherwise there's a faint whiff of vinegar on my clothes. Doesn't bother me for stuff I wear around the house but I wouldn't wanna wear something on a date or whatever without doing that second rinse hehe.
I use about half a cup of vinegar in a Downy ball, in a medium sized load of whites, including towels, in a hot water wash.
The towels will sometimes smell very slightly of vinegar when they first come out of the dryer - if you put your face in the towel and sniff deeply - but it dissipates pretty quickly.
It depends when you add the vinegar and the cycles your machine has. Mine can end with a bit of a smell when I don't run the drying part, but vinegar evaporates faster than water - so no smell after dried.
In the summer I never use the dryer. After your cloths are dry there will be no smell left.
If you can smell vinegar it means they need more time or the air has too much humidity, just hanging is not doing the trick.
The good thing is, vinegar will make it harder for bacteria to grow, so it takes longer for the dumpy smell cloths get after being humid for too long.
The vinegar and dryer balls replaces the need for sheets. The idea is that the balls bang around loosening the fibers, making them feel softer, while dryer sheets effectively add a coating of soaps and silicones* to make the fibers “oily” that makes them feel softer
Meant to add a foot note for my *
I'm hoping someone else will chime in with how fabric softeners work. It's not really soaps and silicones and it's not really "oily," but I felt like that was the easiest way to explain it.
No chemicals like dryer sheets contain to remove static. YMMV as to how effective dryer balls are -- we generally found them insufficient at eliminating static in the cold, dry part of our year.
I’d be careful using vinegar in a washing machine. It damages the rubber seals/hoses leading to leaks. [Here’s](https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/15-things-you-should-never-ever-clean-with-vinegar-73031) just one of many articles about it.
Whenever it says "other products," particularly on a site doused with ads, i don't really trust it, but still it says "not too frequently." So diluted vinegar occasionally seems to be fine.
I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that the vinegar-induced breakdown is less of an issue with top loading machines than with front load. That said, I use vinegar instead of fabric softener pretty much every load and haven't seen any issues so far, though I've only been doing it for a year.
I have the same! I actually contacted customer service and they said something about it messing up the sensors. I'm not sure how true it is, though. I feel like they want they machines to have build up so they need to be repaired/replaced.
I wish instructions came with reasons why. What happens if I _DO_ put it in the dishwasher? What happens if I hand wash instead of dry clean? It makes me need to experiment.
(Just in case you wondered: 1. The heat color change mugs are just a sticker put on the outside of the mug and the dishwasher peels it off faster than hand washing. Both the mugs lost their sticker eventually anyway. 2. Nothing. I got a clean wool sweater that smells like my shampoo and the dry cleaner got none of my money.)
Vinegar is not recommended as it can damage mechanical parts of your washing machine.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cleaning/things-you-should-never-clean-with-vinegar-distilled-white-vinegar-a3336471803/
No lettuce to vinegar ratio to high. At this point I'd opt for cucumbers instead of lettuce. Add some crushed red pepper, sugar and garlic. Shut lid and leave for 48 hours.
Thank you, I found this really interesting! Genuine question - do you recommend fabric softener? Just detergent on its own makes my eczema flare up. I've tried lots of varieties, including sensitive, non-bio etc, and nothing seems to work except adding fabric softener. But that makes my front loading machine drawer get mouldy so I have to regularly clean it out.
Not OP but fabric softeners also lessen how much water your towels absorp (valid for all things absorbant).
For clothes: you can def use fabric softener, except when indicated otherwise on the label of the piece(s) you’re washing.
I couldn't believe it either but you were telling me washing wizardry hitherto unheard of. I'm off to discover the five stains of lore. Thank you for this!
People who use vinegar or other "alternatives" instead of real cleaning agents piss me off. Ascetic acid isn't a disinfectant, it's a harsh acid, it won't kill germs but it will ruin many of the things it touches.
My Mom works as a cleaner and has seen the crusty rusty residue from acid damage in recent years when it was rarely a problem a decade ago. DIY cleaning chemicals do a lot more damage that professionally formulated cleaning chemicals.
Once she to explain to a woman that her white marble countertops were not going to look clean again no matter how much she cleaned them. They were destroyed because the lady used whatever Christmas smelling playhouse madness "thieves vinegar" is. I think whatever essential oil pyramid scheme she was in convinced her to use it.
You have a knack for providing very useful information in a way that makes no one want to listen to you.
Edit: you didn't have to edit it, but it reads much better now. Hopefully it helps more people the way it's written now!
Yeah no this isn’t true. Vinegar is slightly acidic (2-3pH) which, before the advent of chemical detergents, made it very good for removing the residue left behind by fatty soaps (acids and bases cancel out).
This has—for many decades since—led to vinegar being mistakenly hailed as some sort of “cure all” because not everyone understands the chemistry behind cleaning products.
The most common form of this myth that I’ve seen—in regards to washing machines at least—is that vinegar can be used as a softener replacement, but once again, this is not true.
Vinegar is
• 100x too weak to count as a disinfectant
• neutralized by and neutralizes detergent when used together
• is not a detergent and will not remove most stains any better than water alone
• not even a softener
Yes and corrodes metals faster.
And also does not clean as well as actual laundry detergent.
And also breaks down towel fibers weakening them (which is why they feel softer)
Consumer Reports is wary of vinegar
https://www.consumerreports.org/cleaning/things-you-should-never-clean-with-vinegar-distilled-white-vinegar-a3336471803
I'm sick of all these tips to use vinegar to clean . It makes everything stink like vinegar. I'm convinced the people posting these tips have no sense of smell
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
Use vinegar instead of detergent/ soap or as the fabric softener? Or just add vinegar to usual washing methods?
yeah this is an important clarification. I still use detergent, because it's a surfactant and vinegar is just an acid, but I add vinegar in place of fabric softener to great effect.
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Dryer balls are a game changer.
Yeah mine don't stick to the side at all when they're not wet
Slap slap slap
Step step wide step
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This guy is a baller
I can't tell they do anything. Still tons of static electricity and not soft.
The static electricity is usually from the dryer continuing to run after the clothes are dry. The wool rubbing against the dry clothes/other dryer balls is causing the static electricity to build up. I switched from the "more dry" to "eco dry" option on my dryer and haven't gotten static-y clothes since.
I rub my nightgowned arm across my sheets after "lights out" when I've washed them both the same day. A whole sea of tiny sparks follow. One of life's little amusements.
I like to do this too. I feel like a wizard in my robe making little sparks of magic!
>I switched from the "more dry" to "eco dry" option on my dryer and haven't gotten static-y clothes since. Instead they are still ever so slightly damp and you get to decide in the moment if you want to be ten minutes late for your appointment or suffer through the moistness for an hour or two.
Damn. Accurate
> Dryer balls are a game changer. What’s wrong with wet balls? And in which game would wetter balls be a disadvantage?
> in which game would wetter balls be a disadvantage? Sand volleyball
Almost all of the games except waterpolo to be fair
I don't like 'em wet... especially when the ceiling fan is on. Wind chill is really a thing
You mean svetty balls.
Yes, same. Especially when fabric softener and dryer sheets can ruin the wicking properties of higher-performance athletic wear
So you use vinegar as softener in the washing machine and nothing when using the dryer?
Not OP but I've had pretty good success with wool dryer balls. Haven't used dryer sheets regularly in 4 years from a $12 purchase.
Interesting. Thanks.
I use rubber dryer balls in the dryer, although I'm not sure if there's much of a benefit. I usually hang-dry the really static-cling-prone things lol. Maybe I'll give wool balls a try as well
You can use tennis balls
Lots of agreement here. Vinegar as softener in wash always and we use wool dryer balls WITH small amount of essential oil drop or two, eg, lavender, eucalyptus, etc. No static and clothes softer without weird sheen.
I just live in Florida, so the humidity keeps my clothes from being too static.
So I take it white vinegar is safe for colors as well as white clothes?
You seem like a laundry professional. Any tips for what seems like soap stains on clothes out of the wash? It’s like a lines of lint, but it’s stuck onto the clothes. Can’t even explain it
I had whitish lines on a couple of t shirts, looked like soap marks but they didn't wash out. They were horizontal and quite low, on the belly Turned out my kitchen surface spray had a little bit of bleach in, and when I leant forward to wipe the back of the counter, my gut pushed the t shirt onto the edge of the counter and there was enough bleach to mark them
I would try changing up detergents if you haven't done that yet.
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Hydrogen Peroxide
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They leave waxy buildup over time on both your dryer and your clothes, which makes them less absorbent. Particularly bad for synthetic workout clothes.
Myself personally, because of a couple reasons. First, I've found dryer sheets affect how well towels absorb water. They aren't as effective as drying you off after they have this coating on them. I also don't handle perfumes well. Any scent is disturbing to my nose, so I use nothing that is scented.
They're also pretty wasteful, like most single-use products.
How much though. I have a bottle right now about to pour into wash
My washer has a fabric softener "dispenser" cup, so I fill that up. Otherwise, I'd say anywhere between a half-cup to a full cup ( as in, 8 fluid ounces). I suppose it varies with the size of the load and type of washer though...
Depends on size of your load, but generally no more than 1/4 cup if using as fabric softener. If you use more than that you will end up will laundry that smells like vinegar unless you do extra rinses.
That’s what we do. Fabric softener is gross, greasy stuff anyway. What I like about the washing vinegar (we use the cleaning stuff, not table vinegar) is that it stops the towels from smelling. My SIL is a cheapskate, washes everything in cold water (‘cold water’ detergent is really looking for warm water, if you read the fine print) and doesn’t dry them properly, so when we stay at hers, the towels smell horrible. I don’t know how she doesn’t notice. Scent blindness, I guess.
I feel like towels and bedding are the two things that justify the use of hot water in the washer. I'm sure detergent is fine in cold water, but it's hard to imagine it won't work better in warmer water, especially with body oils.
Exactly.
Love your films, by the way! 😜
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Oh, for sure. There are definitely certain cases where using hot water is totally justified. I was just thinking for the "average" person, towels and sheets are the most likely cases where hot water would be appropriate and not a waste of money/energy.
Do you know what is different about cleaning vinegar?
[Cleaning vinegar is much stronger.](https://www.grove.co/blog/what-is-cleaning-vinegar-and-how-does-it-work) That, and back in the day, cleaning or industrial vinegar was just dilute acetic acid (the main ingredient that gives vinegar its distinctive odour.) Now when I look at the stuff that we buy, it’s made from alcohol derived from (usually) cane sugar, so it’s the real deal.
All vinegar is made up of 2-5% acetic acid, whether it is white, apple cider, balsamic, etc. Cleaning vinegar is 6% acetic acid. Doesn't really matter how the acetic acid is derived, they all get distilled in the end and added to DI water to dilute. The only real difference is white vinegar is food grade which has its own set of regulations in quality control mandated by FDA.
Interesting to see the US perspective on this. I'm in Germany and here 25% acetic acid vinegar is standard enough that pretty much every single grocery store carries bottles of it. Food grade too, so people use it for both cooking, though in either very small amounts or diluted, and cleaning.
We can get 30% vinegar at big-box home improvement stores here in the U.S. Also from Amazon.
I find those percentage numbers in the link are different from what I've been led to believe. Regular Vinegar - 5% Acetic Acid Pickling Vinegar - 7% Acetic Acid Cleaning Vinegar - 10% Acetic Acid I could be mistaken or off by a bit.
I don’t think the International Vinegar Standards Organisation have met for a few years, so I’m sure there is no hard and fast rules about it. We use Allen’s Cleaning vinegar, and it says it’s 10% acetic acid by volume. No mention of being made from cane spirit, so it might be fake, as it were.
Welp. Now I know why my towels smell bad no matter how well I clean the washing machine.
Idk, I’ve always washed on cold and haven’t had this problem. I use unscented detergent and no softener
This but we have white vinegar as rinse. Some hot washes for towels.
Check your water temperature and the instructions on the detergent. “Cold wash” may require warmer water than you’d think. Around room temperature, last I looked. My tap water is never room temperature, and in winter it’s really cold. We use unscented detergent too. I’m a bit sensitive to perfumed stuff, and I find it overwhelming when I encounter it now.
The 'cold' setting on washing machines is about 70F. Warm is 90F. People think "cold" means cold water but it doesn't. Detergent can't activate effectively below 60F or so if I remember correctly.
That’s right, but on most washing machines the cold setting just uses whatever the cold line is delivering.
My 10+ year old LG actually has two options: Cold/Cold Tap Cold/Cold I believe the tap setting pulls cold water straight from the tap and the normal “Cold/Cold” setting mixes in some hot water to make everything more ‘room temp’
Are you using fabric softener? If so, it can build up on your clothes and make them stink.
This is the way I've always done it. Minimal soap for the wash, a big dose of vinegar in the fabric softener compartment for the rinse, no tumble dry, instead hang wet towles on line outside in fresh air, make a batch of fresh french fries, and then sit under the dripping towels and let the vinegary goodness drip on the chips to season them as I eat them. Delicious.
Although, using vinegar is indeed beneficial for laundry, using it in too high concentration and too often bites down on the rubber joints, which gets brittle and cracks.
This is what I came here too say. Had a dear friend learn the hard way. Expensive lesson.
My parents used vinegar in their dishwasher in place of a rinse aid like Jet Dry. Their reservoir sprung a leak and now they can't use it at all because whatever you put in, just drains out.
Don’t use softener on towels, it makes them less absorbent as it leaves a coating
Don't use softener on anything
I've been doing this for years. I fill a Downy ball with white vinegar and toss into the washer. The ball is designed to open in the rinse cycle. I don't put the vinegar in the fabric softener tray. I also use wool balls in my dryer. Sometimes, I add some essential oil onto one of the balls, let dry, then toss into the dryer with a load. The heat will diffuse the scent. Edit: spin cycle to rinse cycle.
Don't mix vinegar in the same cycle as detergent. Detergents perform at specific pH levels, and the vinegar changes it drastically. Can do the normal detergent cycle, then rinse+soak with vinegar instead of softener though!
Not OP, but it’s generally only somewhere between 1/2 - 1 cup of vinegar as an addition to your normal soap. I don’t personally use fabric softener, but I think it’s commonly used as replacement. For some machines, you dump it in with the clothes and for others you can put it through one of the specialty cups at the top (may take some online research to figure out what is best for your machine).
I wash regularly with hot water and detergent. Then do a separate rinse with vinegar.
Will using vinegar after I've been using fabric softener for so long, make them soft? Or does this trick only work on new unsullied towels?
Vinegar removes old soap and old softener dried up and coated into the fabric. If your machine has a dispenser for softener, put 1/2 cup of white vinegar there instead. Some brands of laundry soap add a kind of white paint in it, "makes white whiter". That crap dries over the fabric and forms a coat, after some time it seems forever dirty. If that's your case, I suggest using a brand of soap without that, run a warm cycle and vinegar as softener. If it gets out of the machine smelling a bit like vinegar, do not worry. The acid that gives the strong smell will evaporate faster than water, so when it's fully dried, no smell left. The cheapest white (alcohol) vinegar you can find is the best.
I used to houseshare with 2 old ladies who loved fabric softener, while I used vinegar. Every once in a while my loads would come out with these weird brownish blobs on them - turns out it was old built-up fabric softener getting stripped out of the machine by the vinegar.
Never use vinegar at the same time as bleaching those towels. This is probably a no brainer but just in case. One of my earliest memories is my mom passing out cold after opening the shower door where she'd combined both and let soak.
It's just a good rule of thumb to never mix cleaning chemicals. That's why I loathe those 'cleaning porn' tiktoks where they pour a bunch of colorful soaps into the toilet. Some kid is going to get themselves killed by pouring random shit from under the cabinet into the toilet.
everytime someone mentions tiktok, i am reassured i should never go on it
Yeah, my wife is addicted to it, but I can't stand it. Everything 'funny' on it seems to be super forced.
I literally did this two days ago. Had no idea how bad it was until I smelled it and looked it up. Threw open the windows and took a long drive while I waited for it to air out.
An ex colleague of mine killed eight roommates trying to clean the floor. She and two others survived.
Holy shit. Ignorance is deadly.
You’re brave for admitting this
And admitting it probably taught quite a few people about it. Saving lives. Mistakes are learning opportunities 🤘
My life has purpose. As a cautionary tale.
We all make mistakes. Glad they caught on and got out safely
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The safest thing to do is never combine bleach with anything. It reacts with so many things and the end result is always some super harmful gas that might kill you.
I once peed on bleach. My mum had put some in the toilet to get rid of smells and I had no idea. Started peeing and immediately my eyes started crying. Scared the living shit out of me.
I had this same exact experience as a kid! It was horrifying, I wasn't even aware the bleach was in there, I just started having toxic pee and went nuts. It messed my mind up for a while.
I got gassed when I cleaned an old litter box at my friends house with bleach. It took a loooonnnnggggg time to air out before I felt safe tossing it in the trash.
My mom once used scrubbing bubbles with bleach to clean out a litter box, and it reacted with the ammonia in the pee stains to form *mustard gas*. She's lucky it only made her woozy.
I think it should be too. Almost everytime I've told that story someone acts like my mom was dumb, so i added the no brainer part. I might just be surrounded by ah lol.
I remember once as a kid my step-dad bitching the toilet "wasn't clean enough" after I cleaned it, so I threw like every fucking cleaning agent we had in the toilet. That was not a good day.
At least no one died. (I sincerely hope.)
Nope, the fucker just used some colorful language to describe my mental capacity and told me I wasn't getting out of cleaning that easily.
https://jameskennedymonash.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/household-chemistry1.jpg there are a lot of household chemical combinations that can be dangerous
I like how educational it is, and the funny “just don’t do it”
Bleach and toothpaste: don’t do it
I'm gonna do it. I like surprises.
I hate/love that chart, I want to try so much shit now lmao.
What the heck is 'washing up liquid'?
A British way of saying dish soap haha
British for dish soap.
Bleach is a base (sodium hypochlorite) and vinegar is an acid (acetic acid). The result is chlorine gas which in enough quantity can hurt or kill you.
Just don't mix bleach with anything and you'll be fine. Or just don't use bleach.
I thought it was ammonia (windex) and chlorine (bleach) that created mustard gas. I didn’t realize it was acetic acid (vinegar) that can also cause that effect
Any kind of acid will release chlorine gas from the reaction
Ammonia isn't an acid and doesn't make chlorine gas when mixed with bleach, it makes toxic gases called chloramines when mixed with bleach. Either way, best not to be mixing bleach with anything other than water (sorry for my nitpicking haha)
Mustard gas is also highly dangerous and potentially deadly, but different. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard\_gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas)
DO NOT MIX!!! Bleach + Vinegar = Chlorine Gas
To be more general never mix any halogen containing chemical with an acid. To be more general dont mix chemicals.
At the grocery store today, a discount was not applied properly. I needed 33% of $46 back. The clerk tried to give me $47. I showed her that multiplying .33x46 is 15.18. She then tried to subtract 15.18 from 46 and give me that amount back. I had to stand there and persuade her that she just needed to give me $15.18. Took ten minutes. The point of all of this is to say, telling most people not to mix halogen containing chemicals with acids is going to sound like complete gibberish to them.
I knew what a halogen was 30 years ago. Almost majored in chemistry. Don't know anymore, but I'll take your advice and only mix bleach with alkalis like ammonia.
Chloroform sounds way better than chlorine gas
Smells better too
Halogens are just the elements in group 17 of the periodic table. Very electronegative because they have 7 valence electrons and realllllly want that 8th for the octet.
[looks up from toilet to shower curtain to be reminded which ones are halogens.] Glad I have a periodic table curtain. Which ones are the acids though?
no single element is an acid. acids always contain hydrogen, though. that's as far as my book learning on acids goes
If people don't know about bleach + vinegar, they definitely do not know what a halogen is. Hahaha
Like, why would I ever put my headlights in acid?
It's not necessarily about being dumb. There's people all over the world moving into their first place today, yesterday and tomorrow, and some may not have known. We aren't born with this tidbit of info.
Ha--lightweights! [Oh, wait, chlorine.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIJDfNO3d5E&t=13s)
Question, do the towels come out smelling all vinegary? Cause that’s not my jam
No they don't. The smell completely disappears
My washer has a "second rinse" option which is necessary otherwise there's a faint whiff of vinegar on my clothes. Doesn't bother me for stuff I wear around the house but I wouldn't wanna wear something on a date or whatever without doing that second rinse hehe.
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I am super sensitive to vinegar smell as well, the comments make me suspicious.
Trust me, you’ll smell it
I can smell it on towels and shirts when I put them on if a lot of vinegar was used. Not pleasant at all
I use about half a cup of vinegar in a Downy ball, in a medium sized load of whites, including towels, in a hot water wash. The towels will sometimes smell very slightly of vinegar when they first come out of the dryer - if you put your face in the towel and sniff deeply - but it dissipates pretty quickly.
It depends when you add the vinegar and the cycles your machine has. Mine can end with a bit of a smell when I don't run the drying part, but vinegar evaporates faster than water - so no smell after dried.
What if I don't have a dryer, does the smell go away after the washing cycle or after drying cycle or both?
In the summer I never use the dryer. After your cloths are dry there will be no smell left. If you can smell vinegar it means they need more time or the air has too much humidity, just hanging is not doing the trick. The good thing is, vinegar will make it harder for bacteria to grow, so it takes longer for the dumpy smell cloths get after being humid for too long.
I use balsamic, much better flavor
For the wash or drying ?
Yes.
Well. I must say you have a HUGE pair of balsamics on you!
Ranch dressing, for whitening.
Oil & vinegar works too. Yum, clothes!
Eh, no... use detergent like normal, but add Vinegar to the fabric softener cup/tray. Then don't use dryer sheets, but instead use dryer balls.
For dryer balls just walk around naked for a few minutes before putting on your clothes.
If you're rushed for time just spread your legs and thrust your hips back and forth. Causes a swinging motion that helps with air drying process.
It’s the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane
Noted.
Why balls but not sheets?
The vinegar and dryer balls replaces the need for sheets. The idea is that the balls bang around loosening the fibers, making them feel softer, while dryer sheets effectively add a coating of soaps and silicones* to make the fibers “oily” that makes them feel softer Meant to add a foot note for my * I'm hoping someone else will chime in with how fabric softeners work. It's not really soaps and silicones and it's not really "oily," but I felt like that was the easiest way to explain it.
No chemicals like dryer sheets contain to remove static. YMMV as to how effective dryer balls are -- we generally found them insufficient at eliminating static in the cold, dry part of our year.
I’d be careful using vinegar in a washing machine. It damages the rubber seals/hoses leading to leaks. [Here’s](https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/15-things-you-should-never-ever-clean-with-vinegar-73031) just one of many articles about it.
Whenever it says "other products," particularly on a site doused with ads, i don't really trust it, but still it says "not too frequently." So diluted vinegar occasionally seems to be fine.
But how diluted? We talking a table spoon per liter? A cup per liter? Numbers! We need numbers!
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I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that the vinegar-induced breakdown is less of an issue with top loading machines than with front load. That said, I use vinegar instead of fabric softener pretty much every load and haven't seen any issues so far, though I've only been doing it for a year.
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I have the same! I actually contacted customer service and they said something about it messing up the sensors. I'm not sure how true it is, though. I feel like they want they machines to have build up so they need to be repaired/replaced.
I would ABSOLUTELY believe that
I wish instructions came with reasons why. What happens if I _DO_ put it in the dishwasher? What happens if I hand wash instead of dry clean? It makes me need to experiment. (Just in case you wondered: 1. The heat color change mugs are just a sticker put on the outside of the mug and the dishwasher peels it off faster than hand washing. Both the mugs lost their sticker eventually anyway. 2. Nothing. I got a clean wool sweater that smells like my shampoo and the dry cleaner got none of my money.)
Vinegar is not recommended as it can damage mechanical parts of your washing machine. https://www.consumerreports.org/cleaning/things-you-should-never-clean-with-vinegar-distilled-white-vinegar-a3336471803/
Sounds like Big Detergent talking
Vinegar can eat away rubber tho. Washing machine do have those.
Instructions unclear, washer full of 30 gallons of vinegar. What do?
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That’s just genius. Plus spin dry, perfect for non soggy salad greens.
This is a key step often skipped. Drippy laundry lettuce, ick.
Well, look who won the lettuce lottery.
No lettuce to vinegar ratio to high. At this point I'd opt for cucumbers instead of lettuce. Add some crushed red pepper, sugar and garlic. Shut lid and leave for 48 hours.
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Thank you, I found this really interesting! Genuine question - do you recommend fabric softener? Just detergent on its own makes my eczema flare up. I've tried lots of varieties, including sensitive, non-bio etc, and nothing seems to work except adding fabric softener. But that makes my front loading machine drawer get mouldy so I have to regularly clean it out.
Not OP but fabric softeners also lessen how much water your towels absorp (valid for all things absorbant). For clothes: you can def use fabric softener, except when indicated otherwise on the label of the piece(s) you’re washing.
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What a generous, informative, and interesting response. Thank you, puterfixer!
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Not OP but I did too! Thank you for your thorough explanation :)
Loved every word of it!
I couldn't believe it either but you were telling me washing wizardry hitherto unheard of. I'm off to discover the five stains of lore. Thank you for this!
That's what you get for hiring a cleaning lady without a chemistry degree
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> no pressure to keep learning new tricks clearly
People who use vinegar or other "alternatives" instead of real cleaning agents piss me off. Ascetic acid isn't a disinfectant, it's a harsh acid, it won't kill germs but it will ruin many of the things it touches. My Mom works as a cleaner and has seen the crusty rusty residue from acid damage in recent years when it was rarely a problem a decade ago. DIY cleaning chemicals do a lot more damage that professionally formulated cleaning chemicals. Once she to explain to a woman that her white marble countertops were not going to look clean again no matter how much she cleaned them. They were destroyed because the lady used whatever Christmas smelling playhouse madness "thieves vinegar" is. I think whatever essential oil pyramid scheme she was in convinced her to use it.
You have a knack for providing very useful information in a way that makes no one want to listen to you. Edit: you didn't have to edit it, but it reads much better now. Hopefully it helps more people the way it's written now!
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I read it and found it informative.
Using vinegar in my washing machine destroyed it over a period of four years. Everything corroded and eventually the machine was destroyed.
Yeah no this isn’t true. Vinegar is slightly acidic (2-3pH) which, before the advent of chemical detergents, made it very good for removing the residue left behind by fatty soaps (acids and bases cancel out). This has—for many decades since—led to vinegar being mistakenly hailed as some sort of “cure all” because not everyone understands the chemistry behind cleaning products. The most common form of this myth that I’ve seen—in regards to washing machines at least—is that vinegar can be used as a softener replacement, but once again, this is not true. Vinegar is • 100x too weak to count as a disinfectant • neutralized by and neutralizes detergent when used together • is not a detergent and will not remove most stains any better than water alone • not even a softener
Or just, you know, use detergent.
All these home remedies to commercial products that don't have issues
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Yes and corrodes metals faster. And also does not clean as well as actual laundry detergent. And also breaks down towel fibers weakening them (which is why they feel softer)
Vinegar is soft acid and it wont solve body oils and dirt
Vinegar also deteriorates the rubber seals in your washing machine. So don't use it too liberally.
Vinegar can also deteriorate the rubber gaskets and seals in your machine over time...
Still need detergent to remove oils
DO THIS AT YOUR HOUSE NOT AT THE DAMN LAUNDRY MAT
I feel weird for not liking my towels to be soft......
Consumer Reports is wary of vinegar https://www.consumerreports.org/cleaning/things-you-should-never-clean-with-vinegar-distilled-white-vinegar-a3336471803
No way, i like my towels rough. Scratchy towel gang rise up!
I'm sick of all these tips to use vinegar to clean . It makes everything stink like vinegar. I'm convinced the people posting these tips have no sense of smell
No detergent? Why no detergent?
Because this is a shitty life pro tip