How to bleach white things at home: 10 effective ways

Each host­ess tries to find her own work­ing method for bleach­ing clothes. Some­one keeps these recipes a secret. And we have test­ed and offer you 10 home effec­tive ways.

Why don’t all methods work the same

Hav­ing stud­ied the reviews of the host­esses, we real­ized that often the same prod­ucts bring a dif­fer­ent effect. The fact is that some recipes are suit­able for syn­thet­ics and cot­ton, oth­ers are con­traindi­cat­ed for arti­fi­cial poly­mer fibers, oth­ers only work when heat­ed, and oth­ers require pre-soak­ing clothes.

There are also sit­u­a­tions when it seems that the thing has turned yel­low from improp­er wash­ing. But in fact, fre­quent water and bleach­ing pro­ce­dures sim­ply washed off the white paint, expos­ing a yel­low­ish or gray base.

Often, home bleach­ing prod­ucts do not cope with stains due to the per­sis­tence of the pig­ments that stain clothes. In this case, you can resort to inten­sive mea­sures and use chlo­rine bleach­es.

Anoth­er rea­son for the inef­fi­cien­cy of the meth­ods is the selec­tive activ­i­ty of bleach­ing agents.

Draw­ing a con­clu­sion, let’s say that you should not stop at one method and be upset that it did not help. With com­plex pol­lu­tion, it may be nec­es­sary to use com­plex pro­cess­ing. We offer uni­ver­sal meth­ods that work in most cas­es.

Required accessories

Often, heat treat­ment is used to com­bat dull­ness and stains at home, in oth­er words, hot water or boil­ing. This is due to the fact that clean­ing agents become active at high tem­per­a­tures, and pol­lu­tion soft­ens and becomes more pli­able.

There­fore, one of the nec­es­sary ele­ments in our work will be a gas or elec­tric stove.

Oth­er acces­sories:

1. Met­al con­tain­er for boil­ing.

2. A plas­tic basin or oth­er con­ve­nient uten­sils for wash­ing and rins­ing.

3. Home house­hold prod­ucts: hydro­gen per­ox­ide, ammo­nia, soda ash and bak­ing soda, phar­ma­cy aspirin, salt, wash­ing pow­der, veg­etable oil, vine­gar, laun­dry soap.

4. Old tooth­brush.

5. Sponge for dish­es.

Let’s pro­ceed direct­ly to the meth­ods of whiten­ing. First, we give the most gen­tle ways that are suit­able for chil­dren’s cloth­ing.

Whitening baby clothes

Chil­dren’s skin is very sen­si­tive to var­i­ous chem­i­cals. That is why even wash­ing pow­ders are made on the basis of nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents.

For chil­dren’s cloth­ing, we will use sub­stances that are harm­less in small quan­ti­ties even if they enter the human body. Of course, the same prod­ucts can be used to refresh adult clothes as well.

Soda

A uni­ver­sal rem­e­dy that can be applied to stains point­wise or pre­pared from it as a bleach­ing solu­tion.

To remove stains of fat, grass, sweat, blood, urine, paint, you need to pre­pare a thick slur­ry. For this, 1 tbsp. l. sodi­um bicar­bon­ate mixed with 1/2 tsp. water. For greater effec­tive­ness, water can be replaced with 3 drops of dish­wash­ing deter­gent.

The paste should be applied to the dirt, and left to act for 20–30 min­utes. After that, wash the clothes by machine or by hand.

To make a bleach­ing solu­tion, soda is dilut­ed in water at the rate of 1 tbsp. l. soda per 1 liter of water. So for 5 liters of water you need 5 tbsp. l. sodi­um bicar­bon­ate.

For bleach­ing, things are placed in a work­ing solu­tion and left in it for about 5 hours. After that, things need to be washed.

Aspirin

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion well removes food con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, removes grease, cleans greasy col­lars and elim­i­nates sweat stains. From it you can make a paste for acu­pres­sure and a solu­tion for bleach­ing.

To con­duct selec­tive whiten­ing, you should do this:

1. Take 10 tablets of acetyl­sal­i­cylic acid and crush them thor­ough­ly with a spoon or oth­er con­ve­nient way.

2. Add to the pow­der 10 tbsp. l. water and mix thor­ough­ly. Aspirin is a poor­ly sol­u­ble sub­stance, so it will not be pos­si­ble to achieve com­plete dis­so­lu­tion.

3. Apply gru­el to stains and leave the fab­ric in this state for 1 hour.

4. Rinse your clothes and put them in the laun­dry.

For gen­er­al bleach­ing, you will need to pre­pare a solu­tion of the desired vol­ume. It depends on the amount of cloth­ing being processed. You can make any amount of bleach, for this you need to take 1 aspirin tablet per 1 liter of hot water.

Whiten­ing is car­ried out in the fol­low­ing sequence:

1. Pre-soak the laun­dry for half an hour and wring it out.

2. Place the items in the hot solu­tion and leave overnight.

3. Laun­der things in the usu­al way.

Hydrogen peroxide

Hydro­gen per­ox­ide is a very active oxi­diz­ing agent. There­fore, when work­ing with it, you need to pro­tect your hands with rub­ber gloves.

To bleach, pre­pare the com­po­si­tion and process the clothes in this way:

1. For 5 l. water take 5 tbsp. l. hydro­gen per­ox­ide and mix thor­ough­ly.

2. Place the laun­dry in the solu­tion and leave to act for 2 hours.

3. If after the time has elapsed the result suits you, just rinse the laun­dry. Use con­di­tion­er if desired.

4. For greater effec­tive­ness of the method, clothes can be washed in the machine.

Salt

Edi­ble salt removes stains, bright­ens the over­all tone, removes gray plaque. It is safe for syn­thet­ics and col­ored laun­dry.

If you need to remove the stain — wet it with water and gen­er­ous­ly sprin­kle with salt. Next, for a cou­ple of min­utes, rub the salt into the fab­ric with your fin­gers. If the stain per­sists, leave the pow­dered and moist­ened stain on for 30 min­utes.

For bleach­ing in 5 liters of hot water, pour 10 tbsp. l table salt. Soak clothes for 2 hours, then rinse them.

Boric acid for whites

This rem­e­dy is sold in a phar­ma­cy in the form of a solu­tion or pow­der. Both will do.

Let’s pre­pare a solu­tion and process things that have lost their white­ness:

1. Dis­solve in 1 l. boil­ing water 1 tbsp. l. boric acid and mix well. If there is a lot of laun­dry, you can cook any vol­ume.

2. Dip the laun­dry in the solu­tion and leave for 3–4 hours. Stir things peri­od­i­cal­ly.

3. Rinse thor­ough­ly after bleach­ing. You can do this in the machine by turn­ing it on for a quick wash or rinse.

Universal bleaching agents

These meth­ods can be used for adult and chil­dren’s cloth­ing. How­ev­er, exclude com­po­si­tions con­tain­ing aggres­sive com­po­nents for wash­ing chil­dren’s clothes.

Oxygen stain remover

The clothes of babies from 1 year old get dirty very quick­ly. This is due to the activ­i­ty of chil­dren. This com­po­si­tion is suit­able for chil­dren’s and adult white and col­ored clothes from any type of fab­ric.

Stains of paint, choco­late, berries, food, grass — this is not all that chil­dren’s clothes can be stained with. The bulk of the pol­lu­tion dis­ap­pears after the pro­posed method. The sit­u­a­tion is more com­pli­cat­ed, for exam­ple, with black paint, the pig­ment of which is very resis­tant.

To pre­pare the com­po­si­tion we need:

1. large saucepan;

2. 3 table­spoons of wash­ing pow­der;

3. 2 tbsp stain remover (for exam­ple, Boss or Ace);

4. 1–2 tbsp. l. bak­ing soda;

5. 2 tbsp sun­flower oil;

6. 1.5 l. boil­ing water.

We mix all the com­po­nents in a con­ve­nient sequence and dilute them with water. Fol­low­ing are the instruc­tions:

1. Put things in a bowl.

2. Put the con­tain­er on the fire and sim­mer for 20 min­utes over low heat.

3. Leave things in the solu­tion overnight.

4. In the morn­ing, take your clothes out and wash them in the laun­dry deter­gent on a fast set­ting with­out heat.

Whiteness Home Bleach

A whole moun­tain of yel­lowed, gray, spot­ted clothes can be bleached in one way. To do this, pre­pare a mix­ture. For 3 liters of hot water you will need:

1. sun­flower oil — 2 tbsp. l.;

2. soda ash — 1 tbsp. l.;

3. white­ness — 2 tbsp. l.;

4. wash­ing pow­der — 1 tbsp. (gel — 0.5 st.);

5. salt — 2 tbsp.

Pour all the ingre­di­ents into a large pot of hot water and mix thor­ough­ly until com­plete­ly dis­solved. Then fol­low the instruc­tions:

1. Immerse the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed items in a saucepan, put on fire and boil for 5 min­utes.

2. Close the lid and leave to cool. You can soak things in the facil­i­ty all night.

3. If it is not pos­si­ble to boil, you just need to pre­pare hot bleach and put tex­tiles in it for a day.

4. Rinse your clothes well.

Composition based on laundry soap and ammonia

The proven gen­tle agent is suit­able even for del­i­cate and chil­dren’s clothes. The whiten­ing process will take some time, but the result will please you.

So, let’s start the prepara­to­ry stage:

1. Wash things first. To do this, put them in the machine or wash them by hand.

2. The next step is soak­ing. Rub wet clothes thick­ly with laun­dry soap and place in a small amount of hot water.

3. Remem­ber care­ful­ly, stir and wash the laun­dry with your hands in the same solu­tion.

Main stage:

1. Pre­pare bleach. For 3 l. hot water, take 4 tbsp. grat­ed (liq­uid) laun­dry soap and 3 tbsp. ammo­nia (ammo­nia solu­tion). Mix every­thing well until dis­solved.

2. Put the tex­tiles into the liq­uid.

3. Depend­ing on the degree of soil­ing, leave to act for 2–12 hours.

4. Rinse clothes in clean water 2–3 times. You can add con­di­tion­er to the last rinse.

Removing a gray tint with peroxide and soda

Some­times, with improp­er wash­ing, things become gray. A mix­ture of bak­ing soda and hydro­gen per­ox­ide will help refresh tex­tiles in just 20 min­utes.

All you need to do is put in 2 liters of water 1 tbsp. l. hydro­gen per­ox­ide and 1 tbsp. l. soda. Mix all the ingre­di­ents and place the clothes in the solu­tion for 20 min­utes. At the end, wash things by hand or in a type­writer on a fast set­ting.

Returning whiteness to yellowed jeans

A gray or yel­low tint of jeans can occur for two rea­sons: improp­er wash­ing of prod­ucts or wash­ing off white dye from fab­ric fibers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is visu­al­ly dif­fi­cult to rec­og­nize the true caus­es. So let’s try to revive the white col­or.

Note one impor­tant point. The recipe uses hot water, which affects the shrink­age of nat­ur­al den­im. If you are afraid of this, it is bet­ter to use anoth­er safe method.

For the first option, you will need the fol­low­ing tools:

1. grat­ed laun­dry soap — a quar­ter of a piece;

2. wash­ing pow­der — 1 tbsp. l.;

3. soda — 1 tbsp. l.;

4. veg­etable oil — 2 tbsp. l.;

5. boil­ing water — 5 l.

First, mix the dry ingre­di­ents, add a glass of hot water to them. Then pour the con­cen­trate into a con­tain­er with 5 liters. boil­ing water and stir. Put the thing in the solu­tion, close the lid and leave for 5–7 hours.

The sec­ond option also includes the use of boil­ing water. Here we use oxy­gen bleach.

Mode of appli­ca­tion:

1. Mix 2 tbsp. wash­ing pow­der, 2 tbsp. oxy­genat­ed bleach, 2 tbsp. veg­etable oil.

2. Add to mixed ingre­di­ents 1 tbsp. hot water and stir.

3. Pour the con­cen­trate into 5 liters. water.

4. Load the clothes and leave to process under the lid for 2–3 hours.

Tips for keeping things white

In order not to make efforts in the strug­gle for the white­ness of tar­nished things, We rec­om­mend that you adhere to the fol­low­ing rules:

1. Do not store con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed cloth­ing for a long time. Sweat stains and greasy dirt appear and become dif­fi­cult to remove.

2. Be sure to sep­a­rate clothes before wash­ing. Do not put even light-col­ored things with a beige, bluish or pink tint in the drum along with pure whites. Any, even a light col­or, can make white clothes gray or yel­low.

3. Use the appro­pri­ate wash­ing tem­per­a­ture for each type of fab­ric. Usu­al­ly infor­ma­tion about this is giv­en on a label sewn on the inside of the item.

4. For white and col­ored items, choose the appro­pri­ate deter­gent.

5. Add a quar­ter cup of vine­gar to every wash. This will help main­tain the white­ness of the tex­tile.

6. Peri­od­i­cal­ly take out and check things that you wear very rarely. Some­times, when stored for a long time, yel­low spots appear on them.

7. Do not use exces­sive­ly chlo­rine-con­tain­ing and oth­er aggres­sive liq­uids. They can dis­col­or dyes, destroy fab­ric fibers. Also, at first glance, spar­ing oxy­gen bleach­es quick­ly thin the fibers and make them frag­ile.

8. White clothes can also suf­fer from the fact that there was black clothes in the drum in the pre­vi­ous wash. There­fore, to main­tain per­fect white­ness, first turn on the machine for idle rins­ing.

9. For out­er­wear made of white fab­rics, we rec­om­mend pro­fes­sion­al dry clean­ing.

Use tried and true meth­ods to wash your clothes. Sim­ple care, peri­od­ic whiten­ing — this is what will allow you to sur­prise oth­ers with the radi­ant white­ness of your clothes.