Soak Your Clothes To Get Them Extra Clean

Jordan

12 months ago

Soak your clothes! It makes a huge difference in how your clothes look, feel, and and how clean they get. We all assume our washing machines are enough and it turns out they’re not. You don’t have to soak your clothes all the time, but they definitely need a deep clean every once in a while. So let’s learn about the why and how of soaking your clothes!

Learn why you should soak your clothes and how!

Why Soak Your Clothes?

Soaking your clothes is also known as laundry stripping. It’s a way to deep clean your clothes. But if you wash your clothes in a washer why do you need to strip your clothes? Because your washing machine can get the top layer of crud off most times, but all the crud deep in your clothes from the sweats and oils and products we wear doesn’t come out very well.

Not to mention most people use way too much detergent, fabric softener, not to mention many of us have hard water.

All of it builds up on your clothes. Which is why our clothes start feeling less soft, look less vibrant, and wear out faster. This isn’t something you have to do too often, but doing it every so often, especially if you have a lot of work clothes, it’s a great way to make your clothes last longer.

Supplies Needed To Soak Your Clothes

3/4 cup vinegar (Don’t worry vinegar is safe for clothes.)
Water
Tub
Clothes and linens

How To Soak Your Clothes

Step 1

Fill up your bathtub 1/3- 1/2 of the way depending on how much laundry you’re going to soak.

Step 2

While the water is running add your vinegar. I added 1/2- 3/4 cups. I didn’t really measure, I tend to eye things. The less water you use the less vinegar you need most times. Unless you have never soaked your clothes, then I would do closer to a cup.

Note:

Don’t worry about the vinegar smell if it lingers, when you rinse the clothes out and wash them properly the smell will be gone.

I soaked my clothes for 24 hours to ensure the build up of yuck came out. Excuse the suds, I don’t think I rinsed my homemade cleaner out very well. (Mixture of vinegar and dish soap so it won’t hurt anything. Just make sure you rinse your tub out better than I did before you start.)

Step 3

Soak your clothes up to 24 hours.

Step 4

Rinse your clothes under the faucet.

Step 5

Ring out the excess water from your clothes and place them in a bin to take them to wash.

Look how much dirtier the water is! If you’d never soaked your clothes the water may be a lot darker.

Step 6

Look at all the ick leftover. The longer you go without soaking your clothes or the dirtier your clothes tend to be, the darker the water will be. I soak my clothes a few times a year so the water isn’t as dark. Still satisfying though.

Notes:

I never use hot water when soaking my clothes. If you’re doing a hard stripping it’s fine, but I use cold water and soak longer. I feel like it is more gentle on the fabric.

Why Should You Care About Soaking Your Clothes

You can kind of see the difference in color. Not too much, because I do soak my clothes and hand wash them. But it does look a little more vibrant in the after photo.

I mentioned before that yuck tends to build up in our clothes. And we really need to get the yuck out so our clothes just look better, feel better, oh, and I forgot to mention, but smell better. It makes a huge difference in my husband’s work shirts, BDUs, workout clothes.

I love him, but let’s be honest, men tend to have a specific smell when they sweat. I’m not saying women smell good sweaty, but men have a much stronger smell. And that smell can linger and build up the more they wear specific clothes and repeatedly sweat and get dirty. Those shirts will never look or smell the same.

But once I started soaking them and hand washing them… they started looking like new which amazed me.

These 2 dresses are the same dress, unfortunately the lighting is a little different, we’ve had on and off storms, it’s hard to tell, but after a good soak you can see it’s a little darker.