I remember the days when we used a big black 3-legged wash pot over an open fire to wash clothes. If there's anything I learned and remember best, is how to get and keep white clothes clean and the whitest possible.
Of course, with today's seemingly unlimited types of man-made fibers and exotic fabrics, boiling them might just cause them to be totally unusable at all. So this tip is for white cotton linens, towels and wash clothes and even men's or women's white cotton long or short sleeved blouses and shirts including T-Shirts.
A big white enamel pot works best on your kitchen stove, but I'm sure stainless steel would work just as well.
Add about 3 Tablespoons of laundry soap and the same amount of baking soda, the clothing and fill the pot with clean cold water. If there were stains on the fabric, they should have been treated first individually, but then just boil the clothes for at least half an hour. Keep them punched down so that the water covers them, and boil gently. Allow to cool, wring them out and toss them into the washing machine to rinse and spin out, then dry as usual.
One other little trick is to treat whites with sunlight. There is still nothing as good as Old Father Sun for bleaching out white clothing to their whitest. My Mother often would put a sheet down on the ground, and then the shirt or whatever else she was drying and allow it to dry right there on the ground.
I can remember my snow-white pinafores and her aprons carefully dried, then ironed to pristine perfection. I can't tell you how long it's been since I even saw someone ironing. Most of our clothing today is "Wash & Wear" and while I am enjoying the freedom, I do miss the beauty of lovely white crisp blouses, tea-towels and bed linens.
This sounds old-fashioned, I realize, but once in a while, we run across things which are just better done the old-fashioned way if we want good old-fashioned results.
Happy Day to Everyone
By Pookarina /Julia from Boca Raton, FL
I just want to thank PupperMom, Megan8 and Lanky Liz for sharing their experiences with wash day tips. I was also happy to see that I'm not the only one who resorts to some of the old-fashioned ways of getting our white clothes white as well as really enjoying some of the benefits of accomplishing that in the same ways I do.
I also graduated from the big, black 3-legged cast iron wash pot over an open fire to the wringer type Maytag washer and using double tubs for rinsing. My children loved to play in those tubs of water after all the clothes were done, and I still have some pictures to prove it.
I was another one of those moms using birdseye or curity diapers which had to be washed and boiled every day along with gowns, little shirts and dresses. I took such pride in hanging all the various garments as well as the diapers all together. Each gown hung alongside all the other gowns, and each little diaper shirt with all the other little shirts, all socks together, and of course, the lines full of snowy white diapers all in a row. I think mothers had a kind of competition going on back then to see that their laundry looked as good as or better than any other mother's. Above all, every bib had to be perfectly clean...no stains anywhere or back in the pot it went.
I feel sorry sometimes for all the mothers today who really don't have the time to do laundry the way we did it back then. It may be a lot easier today to just toss everything into a washing machine, then a dryer, but they miss a lot too.
When I was growing up, I helped my mother with everything and all the time I was helping, I was learning. I have thought a million times or more how fortunate I was to have a mother who was always at home, cooking, cleaning, and teaching my sister and me all the ways to do things easier and better.
Those of us who are lucky enough to have had a stay-at-home mom were without a doubt the luckiest children in the world. Even when I do things today using all the new appliances and easier-quicker prepared foods, I'm so glad that I could do it just as well the old-fashioned way, and would expect the end result to be even better.
I taught my 3 daughters and one son all the old -fashioned ways...just in case they ever got caught and had to do them that way. Several times, they've come to me and thanked me for teaching them those things which they have had to use more than once already.
Wash days to me were also fun days. That was the day the back porch had everything moved off it and the wooden floors and steps scrubbed with a broom and the water from the washing machine. Now, how many people ever did that?
They were such simple pleasures,but more fun that sitting in front of a TV or a computer clicking on game things. We had radio programs to look forward to though, but all the chores came first. I hope I'm not so old that I'm the only one who remembers all these related things for wash day.
Thank you all for the lovely feedback. Julia in Boca Raton...proud mother of Sir Catty Kit
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I live in New Zealand so I don't have as much access to products as the rest of the world. How do I get my whites, white? They accumulate grease stains, food stains, and sweat stains. I've tried bleach and soaking and the prehistoric cleaning method as well (the one with the wooden board) and still the stains stay there.
Just putting it through the wash gets it cleaner than all the other methods but not as white as I want. That's why I'm asking you guys for help. I am particular about getting it white because I am the supervisor in the kitchen so I have to set an example you know. So how can I get my whites as white as possible?
By peter from Rotorua, New Zealand
This may not help much because it only refers to stains, but put fresh lemon juice on the stain after you wash the garment BUT before you dry it. Putting stained cloths in a dryer will set the stain. Put the wet garment with the lemon juice on the stain out in the sun and the stain should come out.
I've heard that stains from oils on the skin can be washed out using ordinary hair shampoo because shampoo is made to dissolve hair oil, body oil. I'd use a 'clear' type of shampoo not one with conditioners in it.
There are homemade recipes on this site for Fels Naptha Soap - I think that's how you spell it. But I don't know if you can buy it in your area. You can try to find it on line. But I'd search this site first if I were you. Good Luck!
I have been in the restaurant business all of my life--inherited it from both parents. Mom was a bakeress & daddy was a Chef. I myself am a retired Chef. When working, I was very picky about my white coat & pants. My solution was to use just a dot or 2 of Dawn dish washing liquid on any spots I thought would stain-scrub them for just a minute with a fingernail brush. Then I would fill my washer about 1/4 of the way with straight hot water & add a 1/2 c. of automatic dishwasher soap to the tub--the cheaper the better because most cheaper brands have more phosphorous. I'd swish the water around, turn the temp. to warm, & put in my whites when the tub was about halfway full. Then I'd add about half the amount of detergent to the tub that I would normally use.
I rinsed my whites in cold & added a cup of baking soda. Baking soda seemed to freshen the fabric because--as you know, even washing sometimes doesn't remove the food or grease odors from your whites. I also took my Chef whites from the dryer before they were completely dry. Complete drying seemed to make them feel stiff & scratchy against my skin. Then, because I was such a fanatic about looking right, I ironed them whether they needed it or not. A light coating of spray starch somehow seemed to keep the whites from staining so badly.
I find the the nice white towels I bought 2 months ago are now a dirty whitish grey. Bleach is automatically filtered into the wash. How do I get them white again?
By Irene from Whanganui, New Zealand
It could be several things - first, check your bleach dispenser to make sure it's not blocked. If that's not it, then I imagine the problem is that your towels have accumulated a soap film and need to be "stripped".
Wash the towels in HOT water with 2 cups of white vinegar and run through two rinse cycles. If that doesn't help, repeat the process. If they are still dingy, and the bleach dispenser is clear, you might have a problem with your water. Good luck!
If your whites are turning grayish.. check your dryer. Open the dryer door and towards the back you'll see a circle with some kind of rubber around it. Take a damp soapy washcloth and wipe it all around that circle. If you get black or grayish dirt on the washcloth then it's the dryer that's causing your whites to turn gray. I scrubbed the inside of my dryer and was amazed at the black stuff that came off the inside back and the drum. Unfortunately, I don't know why it's happening or how to fix it other than to not use the dryer for white clothes. I'll have to have hubby see if he can fix it.
How can I get my white uniform (nurse dress) back to white?
By D. Oatis
If it's just a dingy white color that can't be helped with bleach or Oxyclean, try 'liquid bluing', it's been around since forever! It's in the laundry dept of the store, in a blue bottle. It's a little scary using it at 1st because it is a very dark blue (how could something blue possibly make your clothes white instead of dying it blue?). I believe (haven't used it in awhile) you are supposed to add it to the water & let it agitate before you add the clothing, but it works very well, it makes your white clothing whiter & brighter!
I have a white blouse with colored sparkles on it and I sent it to the laundry while I was on a cruise. When it came back the white was a pale brown and the colored sparkles were unaffected.
What can I do to return the blouse to white without damaging the sparkles?I'm sure someone has already given some hints to whiten whites, but I guess I've missed them. My whites are dingy even though I add bleach and use hot water. What can I do?
By anne
If you are using a dryer all the time for drying your clothes, you might try finding a way to use the sun to help whiten some of the cotton fabrics. I'm not sure that the sun will help too much when it comes to the polyesters and other man-made fibers, but I know for sure that the sun alone will help whiten cotton towels, "t" shirts, socks, bed and table linens, as well as dish or tea towels.
Boiling cotton on the stove will help too, but not everyone has the tubs or buckets to do that with today. You might also try using a little of the electric dishwashing powder, Cascade in some loads to see if it helps.
Water is so often the culprit when it comes to whitening clothes today. Water which contains a lot of iron is just always going to dull the whites and even the pastel colored clothing. You might try adding Oxyclean to those washer loads.
Good luck. I've been there and done that, and it can be a troublesome problem. I understand. I grew up during the time of when a woman was judged partially by the quality of her laundry abilities, and the way the clothes looked hanging out on clotheslines.
Pookarina
My t-shirts are all turning light brown from white. I use the same Arm and Hammer soap and the good Clorox. The only change is I moved and now I have well water and very hot water. Help.
By Tommy
If you have hard water and add bleach to it, the water in the washer will turn kind of brownish, and any white laundry will turn kind of a peachy-beige color. This happened when my oldest daughter was a baby we had moved into a town that had hard water, and I had added bleach to the water I had put her diapers into and when the load was done, she had colored diapers. Over time they did lighten, but they always had a light tint of color. I don't know if all bleaches work that way in all hard water, but that was my experience. This happened back in the mid-sixties.
