How to keep your white clothes white

Photo: Daria Nepriakhina

Isn’t it so annoying when buying a good quality shirt or t-shirt, you think would last forever and then one morning you realize it has gotten yellow stains under the sleeves? Even if the garment is newly washed it might seem unfresh and dirty due to the yellow stains. Some of us may sweat more than others, but sweat stains are something everyone must deal with in their laundry.

Many of the deodorants we consume today contain metals and when our sweat (mainly the salt in our sweat) is mixed with these heavy metals, yellow stains occur on our clothes. We highly recommend you start using an aluminum-free deodorant, both to avoid these yellow sweat stains occurring but also to find a product that the body works more harmoniously with. 

Using bicarbonate to bleach yellowed clothes is an old hack that has been used as early as 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians used bicarbonate for all kinds of cleaning purposes. In addition to being effective, bicarbonate is also completely natural and environmentally friendly!

So how to use this magical powder?

Pour approximately one deciliter of bicarbonate into the detergent compartment when you wash your white clothes and run the machine as usual with your standard detergent. The bicarbonate affects the pH balance and increases the detergent's cleansing effect. Your laundry will be really clean and you’ll also save money. If you need to treat more concentrated stains, like the ones caused by armpit sweat, you can first treat the stain with a mixture of bicarbonate paste before you run your dirty laundry in the machine.

Prepare a bicarbonate paste by simply mixing bicarbonate and water until you have a paste, ie a creamy and slightly gooey consistency. Rub the paste on the stain with your fingers or with an old tooth brush. Let sit for 15 min before you wash the garment in the machine. For particularly stubborn stains, you can add a little vinegar to the paste before washing the garments. Worth mentioning is that bicarbonate also neutralizes bad odor. 

Now don’t throw away your white clothes just because they’ve gotten some sweat stains, try this hack and let us know if it worked out.

Photo: Ryoji Hayasak