So, what is stripping laundry, exactly? This aggressive cleaning method is meant to strip heavily used items of built-up soil, laundry detergent, and fabric softener from assumed 'clean' laundry, according to an article that Maytag published on the topic. After pouring in several powdered cleaning products, the bathtub water slowly becomes a sludgy rainbow of gray, brown, and black, as the contents of the tub receive an extreme deep clean – it's both disgusting and oddly mesmerizing. Find the best price and you’ll be golden.If you've been on any social media platform recently, you may have come across a video showing a method of laundry deep cleaning called 'laundry stripping.' The videos typically show a person's bathtub filled with water and everything from towels and sheets to stuffed animals floating in it. As long as unscented and nothing else (oddly) added, it’s all the same. Then continue to launder as usual.īorax is sold as Twenty Mule Team Borax in many stores or in bulk as borax powder. MORE: What is Laundry Stripping? A Complete Guideįor super-stained items or uniforms that have become dingy gray, do a one-time pre-soak for 30 minutes in a solution of one tablespoon of borax per gallon of warm water or add 1/2 cup of borax to a pre-soak cycle in your washing machine.

The alkaline pH of borax helps to break down acidic stains like tomato or mustard. Boosts detergentīorax increases the stain-removal ability of your detergent. It helps to get rid of ammonia odor in baby clothes, diapers, bed pads, and incontinence pads. Gets rid of odorsīorax neutralizes laundry odors because it inhibits fungi and mold it has disinfecting properties. It softens hard water and also helps to remove soap residue from clothing. PH bufferīorax acts as a pH buffer which means cleaner clothes. Test: Try washing your clothes in just water for some time (no detergent), and you’ll be amazed at how much detergent comes from your clothing. The borates in Borax work to keep soap dispersed throughout the load, so it’s more likely to rinse out. If you don’t like to use bleach, borax is still a good whitener on its own. This enhances the action of bleach, whether you add it separately or it’s already present in your laundry detergent. MORE: “Laundry Stripping” is the Easy Solution for Dingy Gray Sheets, Towels, Underwearīorax whitens your whites because it converts some water molecules to hydrogen peroxide, a whitening agent.Safeīorax is safe to mix with chlorine bleach and detergents and has been proven to enhance their cleaning power. ( Homemade laundry detergent does contain Borax, but a very small amount which translates to a minuscule amount in a washer load, which may be sufficient for maintenance.) 7 Reasons to Add Borax Naturalīorax is a natural mineral, sodium tetraborate, which has been mined out of the ground and used for thousands of years. This will boost the cleaning power of your laundry detergent. Here’s a frugal way to fix I have discovered that can and also prevent this problem of white and light-colored items like sheets, shirts, and towels taking on an ugly shade of pale gray.Īdd a half cup of borax to each wash load with the clothes (in the detergent dispenser or just throw it in with the clothes ) for both top and or front-loading machines. If you’re sick and tired of perfectly functional household linens or clothing items ending up in the rag bag simply because they turned a dingy shade of gray when you expected your white laundry to come out brilliantly white, help is on the way.ĭingy gray is usually a sign of a build-up of too much detergent that is not getting rinsed away entirely in the rinse cycle together with new stains, sweat, bacteria that work their way into textile fibers. If you have well water or hard water containing unusually high amounts of iron, that could also contribute to this problem.

Laundry stripping hoax