New Towels!

If you think I'm a geek about my existing towels, I shouldn't admit that I get giddy about new ones. Only because I don't buy them often, I splurge and buy good ones and I love colour.

If you want those new towels to be beautiful for longer, treat them right! Always launder towels before using them for the first time. Here are a few great things I have learned with new towels:

• For new, coloured towels, soak and then wash them in a vinegar/ water solution to help 'set' the colours. Salt (regular table salt) also helps set colours, so if you wanted to do a second 'soak' you could do this as well with about 1/3 cup of salt. With bold, saturated or deep colours, this is particularly important;
• Deep colours may bleed for a few washes even when treated, so be careful what you wash them with for the first 10 washes!
• Fabric softeners reduce the absorption of your towels. They also reduce the 'loft' of your towels. This is because they coat the cotton. If you are starting with new towels, never use softeners on them. If you have used softeners on them in the past, wash them with a 1/2 cup of baking soda to help minimize the silicone build-up. If you use dryer sheets, these too add build-up. Use a 1/2 sheet or old sheets (ones used already) if you must use them at all;
• Always wash sets of towels together to keep them the same colour and 'fading' at the same pace;
• Use less detergent than a normal laundry load to avoid build-up... about 1/2 to 3/4 is sufficient;
• Only use bleach on white towels. A colour-safe bleach might be used on coloured towels but it won't have the same disinfecting effect. Either sunlight or regular vinegar washes will help disinfect your coloured towels;
• Wash coloured towels in warm water. Cool water keeps colours fresh but hot water gets rid of body oils, dirt or staleness;
• Using lower heat to dry towels will increase softness/ reduce shrinking. A gas dryer is more gentle on all fabrics, if you have a choice; 
• Towels do create more lint at first and it might continue for a few washes.This is normal for good towels - just clean out the lint traps and don't stress it;
• Lint from cotton towels is perfect nesting material for birds... plush and natural and biodegradable. Won't hurt baby birds. I put some out in a suet cage and let the birds take it from there. Oh - and won't they have pretty coloured nests??
• Avoid using towels on sink areas or directly on toothpastes etc; some face creams, toothpastes, and cleaner residues have lightening agents which will discolour your towels permanently. Watch for terms like 'whitening', 'brightening' or 'peroxide'.

What kind of towels do you like? Did my tips help you? 

Towel Reboot

If you find you are not loving your towels, if they feel stiffer, if they are not as absorbent as they once were, or if they feel weighed down and 'greasy', then these 3 simple 'DON'Ts' are for you:

1. Don't use too much detergent with towels, in fact use a little less than in a regular load. It's harder to wash out detergent from towels. Use a HE (high efficiency) detergent with them to minimize excess sudsing. Using vinegar in your towel wash will keep towels always smelling fresh. You can put the vinegar in the bleach dispenser (just don't ever let the two mix!) for use during the wash cycle or in the fabric softener dispenser for use during the rinse cycle. I think it's most effective in the rinse cycle.
2. Don't use fabric softener with towels: it weighs them down with buildup over time. There is a light 'coating' and there will be less loft to the towels. The scents can also aggravate some sensitivities. If you've been using fabric softener, run them in a wash with 1/2 cup of regular baking soda to help remove some of the build-up.
3. Don't use dryer sheets with towels - you don't need them and they will make your towels less absorbent. Just don't over-dry your towels - treat them with a little care and they will love you back.

Reboot and refresh them using the other towel tips I've posted - and keep them fresh with a cup of vinegar each time you wash them. 

By now you must think I'm obsessed by towels! I'm not... but I think we should all expect soft, absorbent, sweet smelling towels. That's why I'm posting the truths I've learned in these tips - because making sure your towels are wonderful takes no extra time or effort!

Stinky Towels RX

I know - it happens to the best of us! Towels can get stinky fast - whether they are thrown into a hamper damp, hung on a hook so they don't dry properly, or they are hung in a place where there is so little air flow or such high humidity that they don't dry. Smelly towels are a big YUK.

Make them smell better! Fix the smell the Lazy way: put the towels into a bucket and add just enough water to cover them then add 2 cups of inexpensive white vinegar and mix. Let them soak for 6-8 hours. Wash the towels in hot water with a little soap and the soak-water. Dry immediately.

Towels always do best in a warm to hot water wash because they accumulate body oils - the hot water removes them.


Tip ~ This works with stinky clothing too, but you do need to be wary of the fabrics and not everything is compatible with a hot water wash.

Keeping Towels Fresh

Avoid putting damp towels in the hamper, and add a cup of plain white vinegar to your towel wash every time to keep your towels fresh.  

It's one of my favourite tips - I've been doing it for as long as I've owned a washing machine. I genuinely love how people react when they try it for the first time. Maybe it's because people expect towels to come out smelling like vinegar. Maybe it's the universality of towels getting stinky from staying damp too long.


I have a huge jug of vinegar beside my washing machine... and a plastic marked measuring cup on top, so using vinegar in the wash is a Lazy no-brainer. Vinegar can be used with any colour towels and the wash never comes out smelling like vinegar. They just smell fresh.  

Tip - I put the vinegar in the bleach receptacle  so that the machine will dispense it evenly in the wash. Just don't mix vinegar and bleach.

Even Lazier! The vinegar keeps the washing machine smelling fresh and clean and helps avoid buildups.

Simplify!

For every regularly-used bed in your home, you need 3 sheet sets. Some may want special seasonal sheets, or keep an extra set out of nostalgia, but if you want a linen closet you never have to clean or neaten, stick with 3 sheet sets. Because you only have 3, this is license to splurge on sheets that make you happy to crawl under the covers each and every night. You spend nearly 1/3 of your life in bed (or we should!) so get the best you can afford. 

Sheets should breathe, be of excellent quality cotton, good thread-count, be a colour you love. Thread count is a good indicator but can also be misleading - how fabulous is each thread? Egyptian and Turkish cotton are good (there are many grades and types of cotton), but don't let that alone be your deciding factor. FEEL the sheets... do you love them? Do you like the super-soft feel of very high thread counts? The crisp of medium thread-counts? Do you want the added durability and wrinkle-free life of polyester-cotton blends? Do you like cotton, cotton sateen, silk, blends?

I've learned my lesson: I don't buy sheets online. I bought a set of 450tc Egyptian cottons sheets at a decent price. They are too thin, with less-than-sturdy construction, and I just don't like using them. I am giving them to my mom so they will hopefully get used.