When you pull a clean towel out of your linen closet and head for the shower, that towel should smell great. After all, it went through a full wash cycle before it was dried and landed in the closet to wait its turn. Unfortunately, despite your best efforts, you might find that some of your towels continue to smell bad even after they’ve been cleaned. In this post, we’re going to help you solve this problem once and for all. Here’s how to get rid of smelly towel odor for good!
Take a Closer Look at Your Towels
If you think the problem of towels smelling musty soon after you start to use them is a new issue, you are right. This wasn’t a problem for most people a generation ago, but it is definitely an issue today. So, what changed? It wasn’t you—it was the towels!
Historically, towels were made from standard, run-of-the-mill cotton. When that was the case, traditional laundry detergents did a good job of getting them clean and wiping away the stink. Today, however, there are countless varieties of synthetic materials used to produce towels, even within the category of “cotton towels.” If your cotton towel is actually a cotton blend of some kind, the laundry detergent you have been using for years may not have the right formula to clean it successfully—as most regular detergents are designed to treat cotton only.
A Bacteria Problem
Before we go too far, let’s back up for a second and discuss what you are actually smelling when you reach for a towel that you thought was clean.
Contrary to what you might have been led to believe, that smell is not just leftover body odor from “that one time” you rushed through your shower. Rather, bacteria are the cause of those unpleasant smells; they produce stinky gases as they feed on the oils and skin cells that you leave behind on your towels after you use them. When your not-so-cotton towel is washed with a detergent that only treats cotton, some of those body oils stay behind—which means bacteria are going to head back to their favorite banquet and start multiplying. So, in the end, you are left with a smelly towel that isn’t as clean as you thought it was.
Getting Rid of the Smell
At this point, you can probably see where we are headed. If the bacteria are causing your towels to stink, and the bacteria are present because of the oils in the towel, it’s the oils that need to go. If you wipe out the oils, the bacteria will have nothing to feed on, and the smell will be eliminated.
So, how do you get rid of the oils each time you do a load of wash? By using the right detergent. A modern detergent that has been designed to deal with today’s synthetic fabrics—like WIN Detergent—is the best way to get rid of towel odor. In the end, you are left with super-clean towels, and bacteria stench is a thing of the past.
Other Important Tips
Using the right detergent is key to getting your towels smelling fresh, but it’s not the only thing you can do to give your towels the care they deserve. Nice bath towels aren’t cheap, so here are some tips to help you extend their useful life as long as possible:
- Don’t wash too often. If you wash your towels after every single use, you are going to wear out the fabric in a hurry. Remember, each trip through the washer and dryer causes wear and tear on your towels. You can reduce the damage by washing your items in cool water and keeping the heat on your dryer on a moderate setting. Still, frequency makes the biggest difference, so the less often you wash your towels, the longer they should last.
- Don’t let them sit in the washer. When you do wash your towels, be sure to move them from the washer to the dryer (or the clothesline) in a timely manner. If you allow them to sit in the washing machine soaking wet for a long period of time, the damp environment becomes a breeding ground for bacteria—and therefore, stench. So set a timer for your wash cycle and heed it when it goes off!
- Follow the directions. This might seem like an obvious point, but many people ignore the care instructions that come on the tag of their towel. No one knows how to care for a towel better than the manufacturer, so take a moment to read this information and make note of anything unusual or important.
- Rotate your towels. Even if you have a stack of towels in your linen closet, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of using the same few towels over and over again. As you go from one wash cycle to the next, the towels on the bottom of the stack never manage to make it out of the closet! Therefore, get into the habit of putting your clean towels on the bottom of the stack so you can rotate through and use them all evenly.
WIN Detergent to the Rescue!
If you are tired of the disappointing results provided by your current laundry detergent, place an order for a bottle of WIN Detergent today. We believe you’ll be impressed with the results you get from your very first load!