Reasons Your Clothes Don’t Keep Their Fresh Scent
Nothing is quite as relaxing as finishing a load of laundry and taking in the amazing clean smell. Many great products induce a multitude of amazing scents. From basic detergent to clever good-housekeeping tricks like linen sprays, there are a lot of options to ensure your laundry comes out of the dryer smelling heavenly. However, the rich smells often fade over time. What’s worse is that, sometimes, our favorite laundry scent may vanish rapidly, only to be replaced by musty and foul smells.
While it can be discouraging, rewashing your clothes won’t always fix the issue. In fact, many different reasons your clothes don’t keep their fresh scent may impact your washing cumulatively. Unless you find and correct the real source of the bad smell, rewashing clothes does nothing but needlessly stress and wear out the clothing fibers. Some of the more common reasons why a strange odor might be cropping up include moisture in your storage, improper washer usage and care, and underusing or overusing cleaning solutions.
Moisture Content in Storage Spaces
Depending on the build of your clothing storage space, the smell might originate there. Namely, vintage wooden chests and drawers absorb moisture out of the air. Unless you treat them properly, wooden furniture interiors are even susceptible to the slow encroachment of mold and mildew. To put a stop to this, adding moisture-reducing materials helps. A few common household remedies include tucking a bowl of dry rice, plaster powder, or kitty litter in the drawer. The latter also has the added benefit of drawing out odors.
Besides being incredibly attractive in your dresser, floral drawer liners also serve a few useful purposes, including fighting odors. First and foremost, drawer lines protect dressers by adding a layer of vinyl or paper over the exposed interiors. In the case of old wooden dressers, this ensures no rogue splinters will snag your clothes—a great advantage all on its own for anyone with rough-hewn or aging drawers.
Additionally, liners reduce the likelihood of dust and dirt staining drawers and clothes with their easy-to-clean surfaces. The seal is especially important, as it’s the moisture in the air stagnating into a musty smell in the cracks and surfaces of wood and other porous dresser materials. Lastly, drawer liners come in scented varieties that impart their aromas to clothes you store in the dresser. The result is handsome dresser interiors and clothes that smell great for much, much longer!
Improper Washer Care
To the average person, washing the appliance that washes your clothes probably doesn’t make much sense. However, the constant interaction with and presence of water means that the washer isn’t always the cleanest place. While hot water and detergents do actively kill bacteria, it doesn’t help while your washer isn’t running. Moisture is just as problematic inside a washer as inside a drawer. If you leave to linger, bacteria will take hold inside your washing machine just as easily as anywhere else. The result is a mysterious musty smell hanging about the laundry room. Bacteria can even impact the smell of your washed clothes and is a big reason why good smells that do make it out of the wash vanish rapidly.
While it’s not always the most urgent item on a busy homeowner’s to-do list, promptly moving wet laundry out of the washer is very important. While it’s tempting to let it sit for a bit, especially if a dryer cycle is already running, it’s best to remove the clothes as soon as the wash cycle finishes. If necessary, keep it in a clean plastic hamper as you wait for the dryer to finish. When you leave damp clothes in the dryer, they rapidly become a breeding ground for bad-smelling bacteria, which impacts your washer over time.
When you remove and dry clothes as quickly as possible, bacteria have less chance to take hold in moist conditions. Once you remove the clothes, leave the laundry door open for a bit. An hour or two of air drying the interior will cut back on the potential moisture content and reduce smells. It’s also helpful to occasionally wipe out the cylinder using a disinfectant cleaner or a natural bacteria- and odor-fighting solution, such as vinegar.
Incorrect Cleaning Solution Usage
A few more surprising reasons your clothes don’t keep their fresh scent might originate from your choices of cleaning product. It’s less about the brand, as that’s more a matter of preference or the household budget. Rather, every detergent has very specific instructions for use. Many of us don’t worry about the fine details—soap is soap, right? Pour it in!
While this can work, simply tossing in whatever seems like enough may be less than effective. Double-check that your load and washer capacity aligns with your detergent usage. An overloaded washer will not be able to distribute cleaning products evenly. Furthermore, you may actually be using far too little soap for your washer capacity. If this is the case, it makes sense that clothes would come out of the dryer without retaining that clean-clothing scent.
Before you simply double up on detergent, think twice. Too much detergent is a lethal recipe for your favorite garments. Overly sudsy washer water actively degrades clothing. When there’s too much product to water ratio, the soap itself will seep into the fibers of your clothes. When the product-to-water ratio is too high, a regular rinse cycle won’t be enough to remove the soap. Keep doing this and, besides potentially giving yourself chemical rashes, you’ll find that your clothes will begin to turn permanently greasy and wash-resistant due to the build-up of residual soap chemicals. Needless to say, layers upon layers of soap soaking into your clothing can and will start to give off a bad smell.
Scentennials specializes in luxury household items, including drawer liners, bath bombs, linen sprays, and natural soaps. Our range of drawer liners includes a wonderful selection of vintage patterns with traditional scents. We also carry many patterns and colors that will appeal to the modern home, including cute designs perfect for the baby’s room. Explore our collection today!
