Nasty smelling laundry

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samcarter14

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Okay, my husband says I just have a weird sense of smell (truth: I can smell mold somewhere in your house just by walking in the front door), but I am convinced that something is going on with my laundry.

I don’t use scented detergents or fabric softeners, because my family has sensitive skin. We use All Free and Clear, because I also have allergies. I use white vinegar instead of fabric softener, no dryer sheets.

Lately, I’ll do a load of laundry, it comes out of the dryer at least smelling cleaned, and then over a couple of days it just starts smelling…icky. Kind of a fishy smell, but NOT fish. Not clean. It could be because the house is still all closed up from the winter (today I opened the windows as long as I could until the bedrooms got chilly during the kids’ naptime). In the summer, spring and fall we hang our laundry outside and I don’t remember it smelling this weird. The sheets especially start to smell disgusting.

Again, DH doesn’t smell anything at all. It doesn’t smell like mildew or mold, just like clothes that have been stuffed in the closet for months and not aired. UGH.

Any ideas? Should I be scrubbing the dryer? The dryer is out in our garage, if that helps any.
 
You should get a job creating perfumes! Sounds like you can detect teeny particles of anything ‘off’ in the air. I’m that way with food.

Not sure about the dryer, but maybe it’s the washer? we had a problem with ours a few years ago. For some reason it just started to smell BAD. The tech told us we were using too much detergent (I also use unscented). Well, excuse me, no we weren’t.

Many visits later, the problem eventually solved itself. I think we ran the machine empty, with bleach, with water, with vinegar.

You might try cleaning out your washer first, then get the dryer checked out.
 
Do you have a front loading washer? I hear water can get trapped in the seals & start to smell bad. It has to be washed out once & a while. On another note I once bought a belt(not even a cheap one), and everything started to smell fishy. It made me so sick, it turns out a lot of leather products are tanned with fish oils. I had to take it back. I don’t know how that could make you sheets smell though:shrug: Just throwing out ideas.
 
Make sure your venting is cleaned out!
Ours used to have a REALLY LONG vent path… and it took FOREVER to dry one load of laundry (like 90 minutes or more! :eek:), but then we shortened the vent path and cleaned everything out and the clothes dry MUCH faster and have a MUCH “fresher” scent. Maybe worth looking into? 🤷
 
samcarter14 said:
…Lately, I’ll do a load of laundry, it comes out of the dryer at least smelling cleaned, and then over a couple of days it just starts smelling…icky. …
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Does you take it out of the dryer completely dry? If it has any dampness left and it stays in the dryer or a laundry basket or it gets put away in a dark drawer or closet, that might cause a problem. Taking the clothes out while still damp might minimize shrinkage, but on the other hand it can cause mildewy smells.
 
Try switching to another brand of “free” laundry soap.

Also - I agree with the bleach load for the washer. Just load it up with some hot water and bleach and run it through the longest cycle it has, and rinse with warm water.

If you wash ONLY with cold water, many people do, then make sure you do run a hot load once in awhile to kill off anything that could be growing in there.

Oh - and if you ever put anything in the washer that might be damp and let it sit there till you are ready to run a load, then you could be causing smells that way too. I know someone who would toss her kitchen towels in the washer and let them sit there for a day or two until she was ready to run a load - well that machine was SOOOOO SMELLY!!! :eek: She ruined it and had to buy a new one, and learned a VERY expensive lesson.

~Liza
 
lizaanne said:
Try switching to another brand of “free” laundry soap.

Also - I agree with the bleach load for the washer. Just load it up with some hot water and bleach and run it through the longest cycle it has, and rinse with warm water.

If you wash ONLY with cold water, many people do, then make sure you do run a hot load once in awhile to kill off anything that could be growing in there.

Oh - and if you ever put anything in the washer that might be damp and let it sit there till you are ready to run a load, then you could be causing smells that way too. I know someone who would toss her kitchen towels in the washer and let them sit there for a day or two until she was ready to run a load - well that machine was SOOOOO SMELLY!!! :eek: She ruined it and had to buy a new one, and learned a VERY expensive lesson.

~Liza
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Oh dear…I think I’m guilty of that last one! 😊 Our kitchen towels get dank very quickly, and DH likes me to change them daily. Hm. Maybe i need to get in the habit of doing a small load every day? Of bath towels and such?

To the poster re: damp laundry out of the dryer, I try to dry the heck out of stuff. I mean I dry it for a very long time. But I just did a hot water wash (no laundry) in the washer, with 2 cups of vinegar and baking soda in the washer, to help dislodge crud, as I read on another site. And I wiped down the inside. No damp stuff in the washer from now on, either! Ick.

Next up is cleaning the inside of the dryer. Just to see if that helps any.
 
samcarter14 said:
Oh dear…I think I’m guilty of that last one! 😊 Our kitchen towels get dank very quickly, and DH likes me to change them daily. Hm. Maybe i need to get in the habit of doing a small load every day? Of bath towels and such?
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Or just have a separate laundry basket for them, make sure it’s plastic and very open, and wipe it out often with your vinegar and hot water mixture, and in the summer set it out in the sun to dry. Sunlight kills the ickys really well.

~Liza
 
We have this problem from time to time… but with the DISHWASHER. Someone suggested that we put a cycle through, with just vinegar. But since you’re already using vinegar… that probably isn’t the answer.

Since it’s in your garage, I would tend to think it might be mold too. Have you pulled the washer and dryer out… to look behind them for moisture?
 
Do you have a lot of silk clothes? I have a very sensitive nose and silk has a distinct fishy scent for me.
 
Try putting some borax in your laundry and see if that helps. My husband has very sensitive skin and a bad case of psoriasis, so he does his own laundry and uses borax as a laundry booster and it doesn’t bother his skin. It cuts the smell of his stinky work socks nicely.
 
A previous poster has mentioned not leaving wet things lying around BEFORE washing them - do you tend to leave your washing in the machine for long periods of time AFTER washing though? Sometimes I have been guilty of this -it can get a bit whiffy, in which case the only solution is to wash again before drying/hanging out.

Otherwise - the clear frontrunner as a suspect seems to be insufficient time in the dryer, since you seem not to have the problem when you hang your clothes outside. Towels, sheets and heavy clothing like jeans need a lengthy time to be properly dried.

Another thing that could help, especially in regard to the sheets and dishtowels, is to make sure the wash is good and hot.

If all else fails, try a bit of some sort of natural deodorant - say a teaspoon or two of tea tree oil in each load of wash. It has disinfectant as well as deodorant properties. Some people don’t like the smell. I’d suggest lavender oil as an alternative, but I think it might leave stains on the wash.
 
samcarter14 said:
Okay, my husband says I just have a weird sense of smell (truth: I can smell mold somewhere in your house just by walking in the front door)
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I’m right there with you on that one!
, but I am convinced that something is going on with my laundry.
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I don’t use scented detergents or fabric softeners, because my family has sensitive skin. We use All Free and Clear, because I also have allergies. I use white vinegar instead of fabric softener, no dryer sheets.
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OK, I do use unscented softener sheets when I need to cut the static on synthetics, but my current box is 3yo and counting so it’s obviously not often…
Lately, I’ll do a load of laundry, it comes out of the dryer at least smelling cleaned, and then over a couple of days it just starts smelling…icky. Kind of a fishy smell, but NOT fish. Not clean. It could be because the house is still all closed up from the winter (today I opened the windows as long as I could until the bedrooms got chilly during the kids’ naptime). In the summer, spring and fall we hang our laundry outside and I don’t remember it smelling this weird. The sheets especially start to smell disgusting.
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Again, DH doesn’t smell anything at all. It doesn’t smell like mildew or mold, just like clothes that have been stuffed in the closet for months and not aired. UGH.
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Any ideas? Should I be scrubbing the dryer? The dryer is out in our garage, if that helps any.
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Hmmmm. I’ve used borax in the past for deodorizing (back in our cloth-diapering days), with good results & no reactions. I still find that clean clothes and linens do smell sorta stale after a few days. Not fishy, closer to a rancid-oil vibe but much milder. All I do is re-run them in the dryer for 15-20 minutes if they’re too stale when I want to use them. Maybe it’s our humid Gulf-coast climate, moisture in the air getting back into things, I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking about trying one of those moisture-absorbing thingies in the closets.

If you find something that works better, please post it!
 
Chovy said:
Do you have a lot of silk clothes? I have a very sensitive nose and silk has a distinct fishy scent for me.
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UGH, whatever treatment they put on silk to make it washable is so stinky, I can smell it anywhere. Makes the dry-cleaning bills more palatable!
 
Hard to say, but I think the All stuff that you are using smells like glue.

I’m not sure what unscented means, but if that means glue smelling, I’m out.

Put an air freshner in your closet, or hit the outside of the clothes with that Febreeze for clothes.
 
I like plain ol’ baking soda to freshen clothes, esp kitchen towels. I make sure to use the extra rinse cycle & I learned after cloth diapers that a stainless steel tub is worth the investment. (Recently the motor broke but I had it replaced because it would cost waay too much to buy another washer with that type tub.)And clean out your dryer’s lint trap.
And All Free & Clear is the only detergent that doesn’t bother some noses around here.
 
It is the All. When I use it my laundry does the same thing (yes, the free and clear). I switched to Tide Free and Clear and my clothes don’t smell bad and I don’t itch any more than I did with the All F&C (get a rash with anything with a scent or dyes).

Brenda V.
 
Brenda_V said:
It is the All. When I use it my laundry does the same thing (yes, the free and clear). I switched to Tide Free and Clear and my clothes don’t smell bad and I don’t itch any more than I did with the All F&C (get a rash with anything with a scent or dyes).

Brenda V.
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Hm.I think i will try the Tide Free and Clear, then. DH did say he approves of a purchase of scented dryer sheets (for my laundry and the sheets, it’s only his clothes he doesn’t want the scent on them). Plus he is very frugal and a long time ago deemed dryer sheets an “unneccessary expenditure”. But he says if a smell that he can’t smell is bothering me THAT MUCH (and it is), to do something about it. 😃

No silk clothes, BTW. I never have heard of silk clothes smelling bad! :eek:
 
It just might be the all. I was using all free and clear and I always thought my towels were stinky. I also switched to tide free. I use unscented bounce too. No more stinky towels!
 
Is your water from a well or is it chlorinated?

If your water is from a well, it can stink no matter how long you put it in the drier because all the stuff that eventually makes it stink isn’t killed by your detergent.

In other words you need to use a color safe bleach so as to kill off whatever is in your water, just a little bit will do, enough to sterilize the water your laundry uses.

If your clothing is sterilized, and your water is not at fault, it makes me wonder if there isn’t mold somewhere in the house itself or some such thing wherever you’re hanging the clothes.
 
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