Greying underwear

jackyann

I use 'eco friendly' laundry liquid that doesn't contain optical brighteners, and honestly, my whites stay white.
I bought quite a lot of white bras & knickers (not quite a month's worth!) so that, along with the odd white shirt, I can make a wash.
Until I got my lovely present washing machine, I washed underwear, especially bras, in the shower.

pogofish

Always buy black undies.

System

a squirt of lemon juice in with the wash. Goes without saying you wash whites seperately to coloureds.

sillyvixen

pogofish wrote: »

Always buy black undies.

And socks.

sillyvixen

sillyvixen wrote: »

And socks.

I have a few nude colour bras (all though most of my undies are black) they don't discolour and look better under white clothes than white bras.

jackyann

Depends what colour you are nude.

ancientofdays

I add a couple of blue items to the white wash in the hope that if any dye escapes it might brighten the whites, a bit like the little blue bag that my nan had to swish in the rinsing water.

pogofish

sillyvixen wrote: »

And socks.

I do accept a little variation there but yes, still the darker colours are best - but I tend to wear through socks a lot faster than I do underpants, so greying is less of an issue..

DonnaElmore

Why don't you just buy a new set of underwear?



I have read an article and it says that you have to binned out the underwear after a year. According to them: "Failure to do allows bugs such as E.coli and dust mites to flourish — causing problems from urinary tract infections to thrush and allergies." and we don't want that in our sensitive part.



The mere fact that your underwear is starting to grey then it's probably older to a year or so? I know that you want to save money but you're risking your health here.

Zentimes

DonnaElmore wrote: »

Why don't you just buy a new set of underwear?

I have read an article and it says that you have to binned out the underwear after a year. According to them: "Failure to do allows bugs such as E.coli and dust mites to flourish — causing problems from urinary tract infections to thrush and allergies." and we don't want that in our sensitive part.

The mere fact that your underwear is starting to grey then it's probably older to a year or so? I know that you want to save money but you're risking your health here.

That's an expensive and environmentally unfriendly solution, in my opinion. Anyway it's the washing machine drum and plastic parts that can harbour E.coli and so on, that's what needs a good 90 degree wash on a regular basis, especially if you only ever use 30-40 degree wash cycles, so putting new clothes into a potentially contaminated machine will defeat the purpose of having new things!

I've had my underwear (admittedly not white!) with no ill effects I'm aware of, however I cannot use bio powders as I'm allergic to the enzymes. Any whites I have I wash at 60 degrees.

A couple of scientific papers on washing machines and bacteria for anyone interested:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4672060/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4229498/