How to Get Rid of Workout Gear Permastink
Have you ever pulled a pair of clean yoga pants out of a drawer only to catch a whiff of your last workout? It's frustrating and gross when freshly laundered athletic gear retains the smell of your sweatiest gym sessions. It's also totally common and very treatable.
You can avoid this grim fate by making a few changes to the way you launder your workout gear, no fancy detergents needed! But if you'd like a fancy detergent, by all means get one. Fancy detergents are fun.
Don't leave gym gear in a wet heap until laundry day
Bacteria need only a few things to feel happy: darkness, a little organic matter to feed off of, and especially moisture. That means that when you take off sweaty, damp gym gear and toss it immediately into the dirty laundry bin, you're giving odor-causing bacteria its ideal home. Allowing your sweaty workout clothes a little time to dry out before tossing them in the hamper will go a long way toward ensuring that they don't develop a bad stench that regular laundering alone can't touch.
Wash gym clothes inside out
According to the fabric care experts at Tide, 70 percent of laundry soil is invisible-i.e., sweat, dead skin, and sebum. This is especially true of the clothes you wear to your favorite spin or hot yoga class.
The buildup of dead skin, sweat, and the like contributes to the funky smell that develops in your workout clothes, and most of that buildup is on the inside of your sports bras, yoga pants, and sweat-wicking tops. Turning them inside out before washing will allow water and detergent to make more contact with the soil, leaving them cleaner when they come out of the machine.
With detergent, less is more
It's tempting, when faced with a particularly rank pile of dirty clothes, to add extra detergent - after all, shouldn't more detergent make your clothes cleaner? Sadly, no. Actually the opposite is true: Using too much detergent will leave soap residue on your clothes, which will contribute to the development of odor-causing bacteria.
To determine how much detergent to use, check the dosing instructions and use the recommended amount based on the size of your load of laundry. A regular-size load of laundry is 6 to 8 pounds, and large load is 10 to 12 pounds. If you have larger piles of workout gear in need of washing, separate them into smaller loads for the best results.
Use an odor eliminator
Our exercise clothes naturally take on more odors than do our regular clothes, and because garments like sports bras and yoga pants are commonly made from synthetic fibers, they will retain smells differently from natural fibers like cotton. Those two factors mean that, when washing workout gear, detergent alone may not be enough to completely eradicate lingering smells. Enter the odor-eliminating laundry booster.
There are a lot of products that you can use in conjunction with detergent to ensure that odor-causing bacteria and product buildup is removed completely in the wash.
White vinegar: White vinegar is an excellent odor eliminator, and it also has the benefit of being inexpensive and very easy to find. Add half a cup of it to the rinse cycle of the wash by pouring the vinegar into the compartment for fabric softener, which will allow the machine to dispense it at the right point in the cycle.
Borax: Borax is gentle enough to use on baby clothes, so it's safe to use on delicate items like sports bras. Borax will also have a brightening effect on white and light-colored workout clothes.
Zero Odor: This is a liquid product that works in conjunction with detergent to neutralize smells. To use it, pour two ounces of Zero Odor into the compartment for detergent, which will dispense it into the drum at the correct point in the machine's cycle.
Try a sports detergent
If using a laundry booster sounds like a righteous pain in the rear, get yourself a specialty detergent designed specifically for athletic gear. These detergents are formulated with odor neutralization in mind, and they're safe to use on garments with elastic or those made from sweat-wicking material.
There are lots of sports detergents on the market; an Amazon search pulls up literally hundreds of them. Tide Odor Defense is a pac-style detergent that is used in conjunction with its Odor Rescue booster pacs. HEX was developed by a professional lacrosse player for use on his gear and comes in both liquid and pacs. Sports Suds are scent and dye free, making them a great choice for those who prefer their detergent smell like nothing.
Toss your fabric softener
If you take only one thing away, let it be this: Do not use fabric softener on your gym clothes. Not the liquid stuff that goes in the wash, not the sheets that go in the dryer. No fabric softener! Here's why: Fabric softener leaves a coating on clothing that, in the case of workout clothes made from synthetic fabrics, will render the fibers impenetrable to water and detergent. That means that the fabric softener will essentially build up on your favorite yoga pants in a way that will keep the bacteria that develops within from being washed away and, in turn, will lead to the development of a funky odor even on clean clothes.
Don't cook your gear in the dryer
Heat amplifies odors, so smells caused by lingering bacteria will become more pronounced if you dry athletic clothing on high, or even medium, heat. If you machine dry, use a low- or no-heat setting. If you have the laundry set up for it, though, air drying is ideal; not only will air drying prevent the amplifying effect high-heat drying can have on clothes, it will also help to lengthen the lifespan of pricy gym clothes by reducing the stress machine drying has on the clothing's fibers.
You Might Also Like
