My Experience with Laundry Stripping

Think your clothes are really clean? I did. I wash loads of clothes and linens sometimes with extra rinses if I thought it was needed.

When its hot we combat sweaty clothes and sheets. When I deep clean the house the washer handles getting out all that grime out of my cleaning rags and clothes right? Wrong.

While watching one of my favorite cleaning and organizing Youtubers, I was intrigued by a method for cleaning called “laundry stripping”. It apparently has been taking many online by storm. I’ll admit I had a tried a version of this when I was cloth diapering but it never dawned on me to go through the process with other things. I guess I figured the method was excellent for getting out baby mess and believed ( didn’t give a second thought) the fact my washer could handle it well on its own.

What does this method do exactly ? It rids your laundry of build-up from minerals in your water, soap from your detergents and cleaners, and any other dirt, oil, and bacteria that accumulates.

How do you do it? Using a few ingredients and a long soaking method ( we are talking at least 6 hours) with stirring occasionally it is completed. I mixed a cup of borax, washing soda, baking soda, and my favorite Eco friendly detergent together. I filled the tub with the hottest water I could and poured the mixture in to dissolve into the water. I then dumped in my laundry. I stirred it really good once every hour until the water cooled off.

Once the water was cool, I wrung all the clothes out and ran a regular cycle with no soap in my washer and then dried everything.

At first, the water only changed color a little bit but by the time the six hours up it was dark and disgusting. It had a retched smell to it.

In doing this method that is very much worth the extra work I have cleaner and softer laundry. My items no longer get a weird musty smells like they used to. My clothes, towels, and sheets are oh so softer. I think it’s worth doing this quarterly to those items that may get dirtiest like sheets, towels and yard/sports type clothes.

I was pleased this worked even though it was pretty gross. It really makes you think about how we are trusting our clean to machines instead of good ole scrubbing like back in the day. That said, I’ll still be using my washing machine and if your washing machine can actually soak your clothes ( my can’t!) you can with go using the bathtub and run a laundry stripping cycle straight in your machine. If you do, be sure to run a cleaning cycle for just your washer as well.

With all this extra at home time, there is no time like now to give this laundry cleaning method a try.