Towel Trick

For whatever reason, my boyfriend and I have a seemingly endless supply of towels. Beach towels, bath towels, all kinds of towels. While this seems great and wonderful, in truth, most of the towels are absolutely hideous, and hidden away in our bedroom closet.

When we moved into our first apartment together in June of 2011, I bought a brown and light blue set to match a shower curtain I picked up at Home Goods. The towels weren't too cheap, but they weren't the soft, luxurious kind you can't wait to dry off with after a hot shower. Even so, they did the job and they matched the little color scheme we had going on.

The problem with the towels was that, because we used them so often, they were always wet - no matter how long I would leave them to dry, they would never seem to totally rid themselves of moisture. I washed the towels repeatedly, but to no avail. We started using some of our ugly, old towels to replace them, but they didn't look as nice and that made me sad.

Then, one day, while I was looking on Pinterest, I came across a little trick. Usually, I'm not one to try the millions of homemaking tricks you find on there (follow me here), but on a whim, I decided to try this one out. The pinner insisted that this "trick" not only sucks all the moisture out of your towels, but helps them feeling soft, fresh and most importantly, not smelly like mildew. After one wash, I could tell I had hit the lottery - not only did our towels smell good again (yay!) but they stopped holding in moisture like they had been. Instead of having to wash the towels every couple of days, I can now get away with washing them much less often.

Last month, at a family Christmas party, I actually ended up with a brand new set of fluffy, white towels as my Yankee Swap gift. So, while the blue and brown towels have been resigned from every day use, I now use this little trick with my new towels, which I hope to keep looking and feeling fresh for a long time to come.

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Towel Trick

Materials
Dirty, gross towels (or just ones you want to keep nice!)
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup baking soda

Using hot water, wash your towels once with the vinegar. Do not add any laundry detergent. Once the cycle is through, you'll notice your towels are sopping wet (as if the spin cycle didn't work). Don't worry! Run the towels again through a wash cycle (hot water again), this time with a half cup of baking soda (again - no laundry detergent!). After the load finishes, simply pop the towels in the dryer.

I swear, you'll be amazed with the results.