I have noticed that there are some people who consistently smell like they have smelly clothes after washing them. It’s NOT the same as clothes getting smelly after wearing them for too long, it’s more like they smell like wet towels lying in a pile for too long. I suspect bacterial growth, like in kitchen sponges and dirty dish cloths (schotelvodden).

I think some people just don’t realise it, because I know that some people don’t pick up on certain smells and some people even don’t smell anything at all.

I’ve had my share of setbacks in the art of washing and drying clothes, including accidentally shrinking delicates and having my clothes really smell after washing and drying them.

I’ve settled on the following rules to avoid smelly clothes:

A. Never use liquid detergent, only use powdered detergent. Liquid detergents never really dissolve in tepid water, only in very hot water, which is totally against the rules for washing delicates, while liquid soaps are mostly used for delicates. Liquid soaps not dissolving cause a build-up of residu, which causes more residu to remain in your clothes after washing, which is a “food” for these bacteria.

B. Always centrifugate at max RPM, for me 1400RPM, to get rid of as much water as possible, because really wet clothes take an ENORMOUS time to dry, which extends the time they are wet and increases the chance for those smelly bacteria to actually grow sufficiently. Yes, I also do this for delicates (by choosing the regular delicates program, but running an additional very short centrifuge-only program afterwards). No, I never had a problem doing this for delicates, it’s perfectly fine because it’s not the same as tumble-washing or tumble-drying in hot water or hot air so the chance of actual shrinkage is much lower, so far actually non-existent. Yes, it probably crinkles your clothes somewhat more, but I rather have non-smelly crinkly clothes, don’t you?

C. When clothes are hanged to dry in a cold room, I use an air dryer (like the [Qlima 620D](https://www.coolblue.be/en/product/801114/qlima-d620.html)) to take the edge of the moisture in the air. Why? Because cold air has a much lower moisture capacity, which means the vaporising mechanism is severely impaired, which again means that clothes dry much slower. We don’t want clothes to be damp for multiple days, they become smelly. It helps if you have a tumble dryer in the same room, because that warms up the air significantly. But ultimately, the water transfers from your clothes to the air in the room and it stays there unless you ventilate well enough. Ventilating with cold air doesn’t really work, because it lowers the temperature in the room and causes water to condense again and also causes vaporisation to stop.

Do you have other tips and tricks to solve the age old problem of smelly clothes?

21 comments

  1. Adding vinegar in the laundry softener tray fixed a lot here.

    Had clothes that got worse with washing. Now they´re fine again.

    Well. First the reeked of vinegar. Then they were fine.

  2. Some people don’t have the luxury of having a droogkast or a dry place to hang them. Some homes are full of mold. Some people are poor. Some people don’t know how to do laundry. Some people are too poor to buy decent laundry products.

    Money is the biggest factor in this. And not knowing stuff.

  3. Clean the washer regularly. Don’t forget the rim. If you don’t do a programme at 60 degrees every other two weeks, you’ll get ‘vetluis’: a bacterial growth inside your machine.

    Use vinegar and bicarbonate to clean your washer at 90 degrees once a month.

  4. D. Immediately transfer your clothes from the washer to the dryer. Do not leave them sitting in there for half a day.

    Note: I’m extremely sensitive to that smell, which I call the ‘rancid dishrag smell’. Most people, in my experience, seem to be a lot less sensitive or even oblivious.

  5. My neighbours smell like indian food. Very strong spices. It makes me almost gag. Some people are just used to their environment and consider ‘normal’ smell as weird

  6. Liquid detergent perfectly mixes up with the water when I hand wash my laundry… are you sure about what you are saying, or am I being blind?

    Drying is important. Drying *well*. In my experience, it’s all about that… but as my entire life is made out of compromises and ‘making up on the fly’, I doubt any advice I have can be applied. (*I could talk about drying clothes on curtain bars, or on the backs of metal chairs, …)*

    ​

    Edit: Felt like providing more info.

    I do most of my laundries by hand because I *hate* the laundromat. I can’t avoid stinky smells, even right out of the machine. They’re probably not clean… then you have homeless people, drug addicts, also using the place as a shelter. Frequently there’ll be a piss corner, too. Anyway, disgusting.

    Even if I somehow got a fine enough machine, the dryers don’t really dry… you’d need 30, 40 minutes of drying for it to come dry. I know if stuff isn’t perfectly dry, bringing it home will result in my bags being wet due to steam, and stinky the next day.

    Trust me, I’d like to use a washing machine and a dryer. You don’t fit that in a 16m² apartment. Tiny ones that’d fit wouldn’t help, for they wouldn’t fit large items like covers.

    So to escape the laundromat, I started washing my stuff by hand… discovered for the first time ever it was *not* smelly ; it was instead very rigid (like I’d hold it up in the air and it’d stay straight). Iron it, and it’s all fine!

  7. Don’t wash with cold water, no matter what the detergent ad says. Water and soap is not enough to clean your clothes.

  9. Not trying to be petty, but come on, a bit of smell isn’t that bad. Ride on the tram or share an office with colleagues that bike a lot… and you’ll see.

  10. One of my friends refuses to use laundry detergent cause it has chemicals. Just washes everything either with just water or some “natuurzeep” and honestly her clothes smell like sheep cause the natuurzeep is made with lanolin. I’m not a fan but hey 🤷‍♀️

  15. It’s amazing how people can be different on points like ‘smelling’. I am very sensitive to the smell you are describing, my wife barely smells this.

    On the other hand, if our youngest has done poopoo in her diaper she smells this way quicker than me.

  17. I think that currently the problem is prices of heating. When I had heater turned off in the bathroom my towel didn’t dried out completely and smelled. If you have 18 degrees in the house, it’ll take long for clothes to dry and they might smell because of that. Nobody want smelly clothes but sometimes it’s not a choice. It sounds like a rant on poor people being an inconvenience.

  19. I really need a dehumidifier. I live in an appartment without balcony. In winter I have problems with high humidity because I cannot air enough and it´s colder.
    It´s a shame a dehumidifier with good capacity is rather big and expensive.

Leave a Reply