How to wash towels

Tow­els are wide­ly used in every­day life, and quite inten­sive­ly, which is why they need to be washed fre­quent­ly. This can be done both man­u­al­ly and in a wash­ing machine. But in order for such things to serve longer and at the same time not lose an attrac­tive, neat appear­ance, they must be cleaned cor­rect­ly. It is impor­tant to choose the appro­pri­ate tem­per­a­ture and pro­gram, depend­ing on the mate­r­i­al from which the prod­uct is made, to choose a deter­gent that will effec­tive­ly clean and remove stains. From this mate­r­i­al you will learn how to wash tow­els, whether they need to be pre-soaked and ironed after wash­ing, you will find answers to oth­er ques­tions on the top­ic.

general information

One of the most com­mon ques­tions is how often should tow­els be washed? It can be said that pro­cess­ing is required as it gets dirty, but a clear answer can­not be giv­en. But it is not so. Prod­ucts that are used in the bath­room can remain clean on the out­side for quite some time, but this does not mean that you can not change them for weeks. Indeed, in the fibers of the fab­ric, espe­cial­ly wet, microor­gan­isms mul­ti­ply, which can pose a threat to human health. There­fore, there are rec­om­men­da­tions on how often to wash tow­els, regard­less of whether they look dirty or not:

1. Tow­els that are used after tak­ing a bath or show­er are changed after three uses.

2. Prod­ucts that wipe hands and face — dai­ly or 1 time in 2 days.

3. Kitchen­ware is washed every day.

4. Chil­dren’s tow­els are rec­om­mend­ed to be washed after each use, sep­a­rate­ly from prod­ucts used by adult fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The wash­ing sequence is as fol­lows:

1. Sort things by pur­pose, type of fab­ric and col­or. Baths are washed sep­a­rate­ly from kitchen ones. White items are washed sep­a­rate­ly from col­ored ones. Prod­ucts that have decor such as embroi­dery, rib­bons, lace are rec­om­mend­ed to be washed in a spe­cial bag.

2. If the fab­ric has stub­born stains or dirt that is unlike­ly to be washed off, it must first be soaked. You can use a stain remover.

3. Load­ing a batch of laun­dry into a wash­ing machine or into a wash basin. It is nec­es­sary to fill the drum not “to the eye­balls”, but by about 80%. Then the qual­i­ty of wash­ing will be high­er, and the prod­ucts will rinse well at the end. In addi­tion, it is impor­tant for tow­els to absorb as much liq­uid as pos­si­ble, and a full drum load will not allow this.

4. Adding deter­gent, select­ing tem­per­a­ture, wash­ing, rins­ing, spin­ning. When wash­ing baby tow­els, it is bet­ter to turn on the extra rinse pro­gram.

It would seem that there is noth­ing com­pli­cat­ed in wash­ing tow­els. But what exact­ly should be the tem­per­a­ture of the water, what kind of deter­gent to use — pow­der or gel, how many turns to set for spin­ning? Let’s try to fig­ure it out.

Washing in automatic type machines: mode and temperature, spin speed

Opti­mal para­me­ters for wash­ing bath tow­els:

1. The tem­per­a­ture depends on the type of fab­ric. If it is bam­boo — 30 degrees; cot­ton, linen — up to 60 degrees; velor or microfiber — 40 degrees.

2. The best clean­ing agent is liq­uid, for del­i­cate fab­rics. You can use rinse aid, con­di­tion­er.

3. Wash­ing mode — del­i­cate, man­u­al, “wool”.

4. Spin speed — 400–600 rpm or no spin at all.

You can wash kitchen tow­els in the fol­low­ing con­di­tions:

1. Col­ored items at a tem­per­a­ture of 30–40 degrees, white — up to 60. Kitchen waf­fle uten­sils can be washed at a tem­per­a­ture of 90 degrees.

2. The deter­gent is liq­uid, but reg­u­lar pow­der can also be used. How­ev­er, keep in mind that the pow­der thins the fab­ric, and also con­tributes to the adhe­sion of the vil­li.

3. Mode — quick or dai­ly wash.

4. Spin speed — 800‑1000 rpm.

When choos­ing a laun­dry deter­gent, remem­ber that it is bet­ter to wash chil­dren’s and bath prod­ucts with a hypoal­ler­genic gel, with a pre­dom­i­nant­ly nat­ur­al com­po­si­tion. Bak­ing soda can be added to the pow­der com­part­ment to keep the tow­els soft after dry­ing.

How to wash by hand

It is bet­ter not to wash large bath tow­els by hand, because when wet they become very heavy, it will be very dif­fi­cult to process and wring them out with high qual­i­ty. But small kitchen or chil­dren’s prod­ucts can be washed in a basin, thus sav­ing water, elec­tric­i­ty and wash­ing machine resources. The process con­sists of the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Pour warm or hot, but not scald­ing water into the con­tain­er. The amount of liq­uid should be enough to com­plete­ly cov­er things.

2. Pour deter­gent, as well as 200 ml. vine­gar for every 10 liters of water (for soft­en­ing).

3. Immerse the prod­ucts in water, wash, leave for 40 min­utes, wash again.

4. We squeeze, rinse, chang­ing the water sev­er­al times until it becomes com­plete­ly trans­par­ent. You can add a few drops of your favorite essen­tial oil to the water to give your tow­els a light fra­grance. You can also rinse under run­ning water, for exam­ple, under a tap, so the deter­gent under the pres­sure of water will be bet­ter washed out.

5. Final­ly wring out, shake to straight­en the prod­ucts, hang to dry. It is bet­ter to dry things out­doors or in a room with good ven­ti­la­tion.

Kitchen and chil­dren’s tow­els made of cot­ton, linen fab­ric are rec­om­mend­ed to be ironed after dry­ing. In this way, you not only keep your prod­ucts look­ing neat, but also dis­in­fect them by elim­i­nat­ing poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous microor­gan­isms.

We use non-standard methods and folk remedies

Expe­ri­enced house­wives often use unusu­al ways to keep the house clean. Wash­ing kitchen tow­els is no excep­tion, and there are some spe­cial but effec­tive ways to make them per­fect­ly clean and soft.

Wash­ing meth­ods:

1. We take prod­ucts that need clean­ing, pour a hot (90–100 degrees) solu­tion of water, 100 grams of soda, deter­gent, 50 ml. odor­less veg­etable oil and 50 ml. bleach. When the liq­uid has cooled to room tem­per­a­ture, wash things with your hands, then rinse thor­ough­ly.

2. We take sev­er­al small tow­els, a glass con­tain­er in which they are placed when wet. Wet the prod­ucts with water and care­ful­ly lath­er with laun­dry soap. We put it in the microwave for 1.5 min­utes, turn it on at a pow­er of 450–500 kW. After that, we erase in the usu­al way.

3. Soak things in warm water with vine­gar (1–2 cups per 5 liters of water) for 2 hours. We load them into the wash­ing machine, also pour vine­gar into the air con­di­tion­er com­part­ment, start wash­ing in stan­dard mode. Vine­gar will dis­in­fect prod­ucts, make them soft, and elim­i­nate unpleas­ant odors.

4. We take a large pot that is suit­able for boil­ing laun­dry, pour water, add wash­ing pow­der or grat­ed laun­dry soap, soda ash or ordi­nary soda, a few table­spoons of hydro­gen per­ox­ide (if you need a whiten­ing effect). Immerse the prod­ucts in water, bring to a boil, care­ful­ly remove them, rinse in cool water. After boil­ing, it is bet­ter to dry things in the open air.

5. We apply gru­el from mus­tard pow­der dilut­ed with water to wet things. We place the prod­ucts in a plas­tic bag so that the mus­tard does not dry out, leave it overnight. After that, wash and rinse as usu­al.

Before using one method or anoth­er, make sure that the prod­uct is made of a mate­r­i­al of a type that will with­stand such pro­cess­ing. Aggres­sive meth­ods of expo­sure, such as treat­ment with hot water, are best not applied to col­ored fab­rics, oth­er­wise they may shed.

Answers to frequently asked questions

There are sev­er­al ques­tions regard­ing laun­dry, the answers to which are often sought even by expe­ri­enced house­wives, experts tried to give detailed answers to them:

1. Why do tow­els get hard over time? There are sev­er­al main caus­es of such a prob­lem, for exam­ple, wash­ing in water of increased hard­ness. Also, the use of low-qual­i­ty pow­der, wash­ing at a very high tem­per­a­ture, bleach­ing with chlo­rine prod­ucts, poor rins­ing of things, spin­ning at high speeds, and fre­quent iron­ing can also lead to this result.

2. How to soft­en fab­ric? You can reduce the hard­ness of the water by adding vine­gar to it, use the quick wash cycle, wring out things at a speed of 400 rev­o­lu­tions, use a dou­ble or triple rinse. And also choose an eco-friend­ly laun­dry deter­gent that does not con­tain chlo­rine, phos­phates. It is desir­able that it be liq­uid, since the pow­der dis­solves very poor­ly and is rinsed out. You can soft­en ter­ry tow­els if you put spe­cial balls in the drum of the wash­ing machine.

3. Is it pos­si­ble to get rid of the unpleas­ant smell from tow­els? If the prod­ucts have been used for a long time or they are con­stant­ly damp, lying in the dirty laun­dry bas­ket for a long time, they can real­ly start to emit an unpleas­ant smell. If nor­mal wash­ing does not help to get rid of it, try boil­ing them with laun­dry soap, then rinse them in water with essen­tial oil. Or soak for 8–10 hours in water with the addi­tion of soda and vine­gar, then wash as usu­al. If this does not help, you can use a spe­cial wash­ing liq­uid that effec­tive­ly removes unpleas­ant odors, for exam­ple, OXICLEAN Fresh­ness.

4. Does bleach­ing harm fab­rics? Bleach­ing does not harm the fibers if a bleach-free prod­uct is used. The desired effect can be achieved if you use a solu­tion made from 5 liters of water, 1 table­spoon of ammo­nia and 25 ml. hydro­gen per­ox­ide. Prod­ucts must be soaked in the solu­tion for 30 min­utes, and then washed. Or you can soak things in ice water to which salt is added (2 table­spoons per 1 liter of water). You can also buy indus­tri­al-grade chlo­rine-free bleach.

And the last ques­tion on which opin­ions dif­fer: do you need to iron tow­els? Our experts believe that prod­ucts that are used to wipe the body, hands, face, do not need to be ironed. Oth­er­wise, they become rigid, lose their hygro­scop­ic­i­ty, that is, they absorb water worse. To make the prod­uct look neat, not wrin­kled, it is enough to shake it after wash­ing, straight­en it with your hands on a rope or dry­er bar. But the tow­els used in the kitchen can be ironed, since addi­tion­al dis­in­fec­tion will not hurt them, besides, the host­esses try not to expose crum­pled things for gen­er­al view­ing.