# Getting My Whites Their Whitest **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 4, 2007, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505 "2007-03-04T03:19:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sdguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@sdguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sdguy)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/1 "2007-03-04T03:19:32Z")
Why are my white clothes so dingy? Especially compared to everyone else. I go to the gym and everyone else has a white t-shirt and my is all dingy. I pre-soak in bleach, I tired Didi-7, water softeners, but no matter what my whites always look dingy and discolored. (How white can look discolored I don’t know but it does) Is everyone else buying a new t-shirt wearing it to the gym once or do they have a laundry secret? Any ideas how to get whites, white? ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/2 "2007-03-04T04:18:53Z")
[QUOTE=sdguy] Why are my white clothes so dingy? Especially compared to everyone else. I go to the gym and everyone else has a white t-shirt and my is all dingy. I pre-soak in bleach, I tired Didi-7, water softeners, but no matter what my whites always look dingy and discolored. (How white can look discolored I don’t know but it does) Is everyone else buying a new t-shirt wearing it to the gym once or do they have a laundry secret? Any ideas how to get whites, white? [/QUOTE] I wash my white cotton shirts in Rit’s Color Remover (no bleach). Then I have them professionally starched & ironed. Works really well for me. VCNJ~ ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/3 "2007-03-04T04:36:54Z")
If you are chucking your white tshirts in with all the rest of your (coloured) washing, no matter how ‘fast’ the coloured articles claim to be, they will always run a bit of dye into the wash-water and taint your brighty-whites, especially in a warm or hot wash. If you are drying them in a tumble-dryer, the same thing will happen. Is your water-supply running clean…IOW, are your pipes a bit rusty and discolouring the water in your washing machine? When my whites are looking dingy, I stick them in a bucket of diluted bleach for a FEW HOURS or even overnight before rewashing them again. It gets them so white, even I am bedazzled. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nic2004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@Nic2004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nic2004)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/4 "2007-03-04T04:41:34Z")
We wash our whites separate from the colors and we use stuff called [Yellow Out](http://www.shophometrends.com/product.asp?pn=034187&bhcd2=1172983156) to great success ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/5 "2007-03-04T05:27:52Z")
White is a color. It sounds like you are doing too much washing, without the clothing items really needing that much. Think about it, if you did all that to a red shirt the color would fade. You are fading the white color. Wash them separately and treat them a little more gently. Also, you can still buy blueing. A few drops of this in the rinse water and the white things will look whiter. A few too many drops and they will look…gray. ---
**Author:** ![GingerOfTheNorth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cdc98d/32.png) [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/6 "2007-03-04T16:13:29Z")
**bibliocat** told me she knows of a method to brighten up your whites, which I haven’t yet tried but I trust her. In your washer, place 1 cup of Clorox II and 1 cup of Cascade dishwasher detergent in warm (I never use hot, but you can if you want) water. Put all of your whites in and let 'em sit overnight before washing. ---
**Author:** ![2pelo\_honey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/ecb155/32.png) [@2pelo\_honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2pelo_honey)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/7 "2007-03-04T18:41:41Z")
I think the type of water has something to do w/ it as well; i.e. hard or soft? I think the softer it is, the whiter clothes will wash? I’m definitely not positive on that, but recall being on a little vacay w/ my ex, at a lakeside town, and running a quick load of whites mid-week, and they absolutely sparkled…to the extent he even noticed it, as he was not one to do that. And, I’ve always separated my whites from colors, so that wasn’t it. ---
**Author:** ![A.R.Cane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@A.R.Cane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.R.Cane)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-my-whites-their-whitest/394505/8 "2007-03-04T18:47:51Z")
You could try bluing. It’s not as hard on your clothes as bleach and it’s what your grandmother, or great grandmother used. > **[Bluing (fabric)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluing_%28fabric%29)** > > Bluing, laundry blue, dolly blue or washing blue is a household product used to improve the appearance of textiles, especially white fabrics. Used during laundering, it adds a trace of blue dye (often synthetic ultramarine, sometimes Prussian blue) to the fabric. > White fabrics acquire a slight color cast after use (usually grey or yellow). Since blue and yellow are complementary colors in the subtractive color model of color perception, adding a trace of blue color to the slightly off-white colo...