Towels are hard after washing because they build up soapy residue and are over-dried. Here's the good news: With a few simple tricks, you can restore your towels to their original softness and help ensure that they never go scratchy again. Use warm water.
Add Baking Soda
Mix half a cup of baking soda along with a normal detergent dose for fluffier and cleaner towels. Baking soda also naturally eliminates musty and mildew smells that come from towels remaining damp for too long.
“A stiff towel probably means the dryer was too stuffed,” Rapinchuk says. Dryer balls or clean tennis balls can help reduce static and break up clumps. It's also not a bad idea to open the door midway through the cycle and pull apart any tangled towels.
The main reason is that they wash their towels in hot water 40-50c with commercial detergent and no fabric softener. Fabric softener can really reduce the absorbency of your towels,which leave a waxy residue on towels, for example. Also, cotton gets more absorbent with use, and hotel towels are well-used.
Use Vinegar or Baking Soda
Avoid fabric softeners. They usually contain silicon, which makes towels less absorbent so they don't wash well. Instead, use half a cup of vinegar or baking soda with your towels.
Baking soda in the laundry can be a great addition for a natural fabric softener or controlling excess suds, while vinegar in laundry can be an amazing agent for getting those whites extra sparkling and banishing mildew odor. They help even the best laundry detergents to be more effective.
When washing your clothing, add 1/2 cup of vinegar to the fabric softener compartment just before the last rinse cycle. If you'd like your clothes to have a mild scent, add four or five drops of essential oil into the fabric softener compartment.
Soften towels with vinegar
The expert-recommended way to soften towels that have become scratchy is to use vinegar. 'Throw a cup of white vinegar in your next wash,' advises textiles expert and CEO of New Sega Home, Brian Delp. The towels have likely become stiff and scratchy because of the use of fabric softener.
Vinegar is a laundry workhorse superstar! Use 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar in the fabric softener compartment of your machine – it softens towels and helps removes bacteria, a much better option than coating said towels with synthetic chemicals.
It happens when fabric softeners and residue from dryer sheets build up on the fibers. But even the crustiest of towels can feel like new by washing them with this simple trick. First, load your washer with towels (clean or dirty, doesn't matter) and set your washer's temperature to hot water or the sanitize cycle.
Baking soda is another naturally effective way to soften your bath towels. Just add 1/2 cup of baking soda along with your normal amount of detergent in the wash. Like vinegar, baking soda will also help remove build up from your towels, making your towels softer.
Use fabric softener according to directions, but add it only every three or four washes. Waxy buildup from softeners can deteriorate the towel fibers over time and reduce their absorbency. No one wants a towel that's not fluffy, so be careful when using fabric softener with towels.
Because vinegar contains acetic acid, it dissolves all sorts of grime and mineral deposits on your towels. Baking soda is alkaline, which helps to neutralize odors. To recharge your towels, be sure to: Wash your towels with 1 cup of white vinegar and hot water.
One of the downsides of front loaders (and water-efficient top loaders) is that they can produce stiff, rough or scratchy towels. That's because the towels are generally tumbling through just a little water rather than floating through lots like in an older-style top loader.
A small amount of water bound to the surface of the towel acts like glue to hold the cotton fibers together. (Inside Science) -- The stiff, crunchy feel of an air-dried cotton towel is caused by a small amount of residual water “gluing” the fibers together, new research shows.
Before going further, we have to warn you: adding vinegar or baking soda to the wash along with your laundry detergent increases the risk of poorer cleaning performance, as detergents are optimized for a specific pH level, which is altered by the presence of these two household additives in the wash.
Washing towels with vinegar and baking soda can bring them back to life in just three steps: Wash towels in hot water and one cup vinegar. Don't add any detergent. Wash the towels a second time (without drying them) in hot water and one cup baking soda.
Vinegar is a safe and natural fabric softener. You can use it in place of a fabric softener, I do it all the time. I add it to the fabric softener spot on my washer and let it do it's thing. You're going to love how soft your towels are and they won't smell like vinegar at all once dry.
For Extra-Clean Clothes
“It will help lift dirt and grime from clothing,” says Reichert. Don't put baking soda in your washer's detergent dispenser, however. Instead, sprinkle it into the empty drum of your washer, then add clothes and whatever detergent and fabric softeners you'd normally use.
Don't mix baking soda and vinegar.
If you do, it will cause a chemical reaction that will cancel both products' effects. It will result in creating carbon dioxide that is ineffective at cleaning and deodorizing clothes.
Vinegar is sometimes used as a fabric softener or for getting rid of stains and odors in laundry. But as with dishwashers, it can damage the rubber seals and hoses in some washing machines to the point of causing leaks.
1. Wash your towels with hot water and 1 cup of white vinegar, (don't use any detergents or fabric softeners). 2. Run the towels through a second wash with 1/2 cup baking soda and hot water, (again, no detergent or fabric softener).
Add Distilled White Vinegar and Wash as Usual
Do not add any detergent or fabric softener. Instead, add two cups of distilled white vinegar to the washer drum. The vinegar will help strip away the residue left in the towels that is causing them to feel stiff.