If your towels have a musty odor even after they've been washed, it's time to take some additional cleaning steps. Smelly towels can be harboring mildew and other pathogens that could have adverse affects on one's health.
Wash With Vinegar and Hot Water
Wash your musty towels on the hot water cycle with one cup of distilled white vinegar. White vinegar is a natural cleaner and deodorizer, so it's an ideal solution to get mildew smell out of towels.
After having a shower and drying your body with a luxury soft towel, you just throw it on the bathroom door, floor, or somewhere it can't dry. Not properly giving your towel time to dry will make the towel breed bacteria and cause your hand and bath towels to give unpleasant odors.
All you'll need is one cup of white vinegar and one cup of baking soda. You'll be using these two ingredients separately, as using them together will only cancel out the effectiveness of each one, during two washes on the same load of towels.
Some people suggest doubling up on hacks and using white vinegar and baking soda in the same load. I would warn against it, as it may cause the machine to overflow. If you are looking for extra, extra fluffiness and buoyancy, try washing with baking soda and detergent first, followed by washing with white vinegar.
Refresh Your Towels!
Over time, towels build up detergent and fabric softener, leaving them unable to absorb as much water and smelly, refresh your towels: Wash towels once with hot water and 1cup vinegar, Wash towels a 2nd time with hot water and half cup baking soda.
By adding 1/2 cup of baking soda to each laundry load, detergents can work more effectively and reduce bacteria. For heavy odor problems like underarm perspiration or environmental odors like cigarette smoke, use baking soda and water as a pre-soak.
While scented detergents and other laundry treatments merely mask odors with artificial scents, baking soda actually removes many odors by neutralizing the acids that produce the odor.
Mix half a cup of water and ¼ cup baking soda into a small bowl. Add the solution to the detergent container of the washing machine. Pour 2 cups of vinegar into the drum. Close the door and set the washing machine to a normal load at the hottest water setting.
The mixture quickly foams up with carbon dioxide gas. If enough vinegar is used, all of the baking soda can be made to react and disappear into the vinegar solution. The reaction is: Sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid reacts to carbon dioxide, water and sodium acetate.
For best results, add vinegar to the rinse cycle after the detergent has done its job in the wash cycle.
Using too much vinegar or the wrong type can actually harm the rubber seals in your washer, so it's important to make sure you only use white vinegar and do so in moderation.
Simply add 1/4 cup of white vinegar to the fabric softener dispenser or to a fabric softener ball. The white vinegar will act as a fabric softener AND it will keep your washing machine smelling fresh and clean!
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).
Neutralizing mildew smells in towels isn't a one-step process. To make your towels smell fresh, you need to completely remove the causes of unpleasant odors rather than just masking the smell. For the most environmentally friendly, simple and inexpensive odor removal, you can use vinegar and baking soda.
Use Vinegar
Use about half the recommended amount of detergent while washing and add ½ to 1 cup of white vinegar to the water during the rinse cycle. The vinegar helps set the colors and removes excess detergent residue.
Wash Towels with Vinegar
It's easy to freshen up your towels. Start with a hot water cycle (for whites) or warm cycle (colors) and add about half the detergent you'd use for clothes. To clean musty towels or strip old fabric softener away, add 1/2 to 1 cup of white vinegar to your rinse cycle.