This Affordable Household Ingredient Will Keep Your Linen Extra Fresh

When you've invested in quality linen, you want it to stay as fresh as possible. The good news is caring for linen is simple because it's one of the strongest natural fibres. But if you want to give your bedding or towels that extra little boost, you might want to consider adding humble old vinegar to your laundry mix.

Vinegar seems to be that miracle ingredient. It's great for everything from tackling grime to helping eradicate mould. And the best part? It's a natural disinfectant that costs very little. It's also a useful, affordable, and eco-friendly addition to your laundry routine.

While you don't need to add vinegar to every wash cycle, incorporating it every now and then can have some great benefits and keep your linen extra fresh.

Below, we're taking a look at some of the biggest benefits that vinegar can have on your linen.

1. Removes odours

Regardless of how pristine your housekeeping may be, keeping that fresh linen scent once they’ve been stored in a closet for a while can be a challenge. Enter, vinegar! It's excellent at neutralising odours.

Simply adding 1/2 to 1 cup of vinegar to the wash can help eliminate these smells.

This might be a trick you want to use for your bath towels, as these can harbour bacteria which gives you that unpleasant, sour odour. Vinegar contains acetic acid that breaks up mineral deposits, and dissolves the build-up of body soils on your towels.

2. Brightens colours

Odours, detergent residues, and mineral deposits from hard water can result in your linen colours fading over time. Thankfully, vinegar is mildly acidic and can help dissolve and remove these odours, detergent residues, and mineral deposits, allowing the colours in your linen to shine through more effectively. Vinegar also helps to set the dye in the fabric, making it less likely to fade over time.

3. Treats stains

None of us are perfect, and sometimes accidents happen. Thankfully, vinegar is a great ingredient for treating stains. Whether you've spilt your morning coffee or a sneaky glass of wine, mix equal parts white vinegar and water, apply it to the stain, blot or gently rub, and then rinse. After treating the stain, wash your linen as you normally would.

4. Softens linen

Linen is highly absorbent and moisture absorption is key to the unique ability of linen to soften over time. Each time your linen is washed, it becomes softer and more absorbent – no fabric softener is necessary.

However, if you want to speed up the softening process, vinegar can be a handy, natural ingredient, as it serves as a natural fabric softener. Rather than using commercial fabric softeners that can contain chemicals and fragrances, simply add 1/2 to 1 cup of white vinegar to your normal rinse cycle.

It can also help remove detergent residue, which can make fabrics feel stiff.

Tips

• Distilled white vinegar is the least expensive and best choice for laundry because it contains no tannins to discolour fabrics.
• Do not substitute distilled white vinegar with cleaning vinegar as this might bleach your linen.
• Always dilute your white vinegar as full-strength vinegar can cause dark-coloured fabrics to fade.
• Never mix vinegar and chlorine bleach as it can create potentially lethal chlorine gas.
• Avoid using vinegar in every wash as overuse can actually harm the rubber seals in your washer.