Yellowing White

Are your whites turning yellow?  There are dozens of tricks you can find online that depend on the kind of yellowing.  For example, there's the storage-yellowing and there's the body oils-yellowing.

My own sheets were quite disgraceful.  Except for an occasional wash maybe twice a year, my sheets remained on my bed - for years.  Perhaps yours looked like mine - white as white at the bottom and yellow at the top.

Well, regular washing with detergent doesn't get that out - I've realized after many, many years of washing.  Now that spring has set in, I was determined to get some real cleaning done, and that included bright white sheets.  I tried adding bleach in with a regular wash to no success.  But if I had looked it up online, I would known that this method is notorious for not working.  Well, you know what they say about experience anyway.

Some say to let whites soak in oxygen-based bleach in hot water for twenty-four hours, and then wash.  I don't know if there's a difference between the effects of oxygen-based and non-oxygen-based (I assume there is) on fabrics, but anyway, bleach is notorious for damaging or coloring whites.  Some sources said to hang whites in the sun - that may be effective for whites that have yellowed in storage.

But what I tried was a run through the washing machine in hot water with about cup of white vinegar.  Well, I'll just let the results speak for me - white as white from top to bottom of my sheets!  I'm so, so glad.

So if you have yellow sheets, I encourage you to try!  Also, if you have Oxi-Clean, I'd be very interested to know what it does to yellowing whites (with hot water).

~Meggy