@emery Well, I will suggest Charlie’s Soap, which doesn’t make anyone in my family break out in a rash. It’s worked well enough for us, but we don’t have any specific exercise clothes, so I can’t speak to that.

I try to make a point of buying multiple bags when it’s on sale, but I can’t always count on that.

Ah, yeah, I'm in a city with extremely hard water so that's probably why it's recommended here to do it more often.

I don't know if it's part of older washing machines, but I've never had a machine that had a hot setting higher than 60C. (I've also never had a brand new washing machine though.)

@tefferbear We don't have that here, so I looked up what's in it: "The formulation is a combination of ingredients, the key ingredient being sodium percarbonate, sodium carbonate, surfactants and polymer."

So it's Super Soda, which definitely sounds like it works! You can use all kinds of household soda concoctions on laundry and even household cleaning.

It's been a while since I knit or did crochet, but there's at least a couple of kinds of 100% wool that has been felted and treated in such a way that the fibres become harder, denser and more durable. "Superwash" or something, because they can also be machine washed after without shrinking. Will wear down eventually, of course, but. 🤔

I've handled some sheep wool yarn with linen, hemp, ramie, alpaca, nettle and/or silk mixed in, which apparently makes the yarn more abrasion resistant, but never worked with them! I know my mother has a wool & nettle jumper that is close to 20 years old and is in perfect condition and feels only slightly rougher and squished together than "normal" wool.

Worth mentioning is that you rarely wash woollen things, so they shed a lot less microplastics into the ecosystem even if there is polyester or acrylic in them!

@kleypack Short answer, it can be, but shouldn't significantly be.

Long answer: Liquid detergent for white laundry usually only contains optical brighteners, which is blue pigment to make the white fabric look less yellowed. Powder detergent for whites contains an oxidiser, which gradually physically bleaches the fabric back to a crisp white. This does oxidise the fabric a little bit. 😄​ Which will damage it somewhat! But on the other hand it also sanitises it as plenty of microbes do not enjoy being minutely bleached. The laundry does smell fresher and I haven't noticed any wear on any of my stuff.
Powder detergent for coloured laundry does not contain the whitening agent. The ingredients themselves vary across them, but it's sodium laureth sulfate, soap and enzymatic cleaners for the most part, in both liquid and powder.

I feel like I have to use not even half of the recommended dose of powder versus the full amount of liquid for the laundry to *feel* clean. Your mileage may vary!

ah this is amazing, thank you! I only used mixed detergent anyway, have never bought the detergent just for whites (too much of my whites are more ecru or have other colors as well). Also totally agree about the amount needed, the poweder goes a long way.

Guess I can safely go back to powder. Appreciate the thorough answer! 😊

@FiddleSix I'm genuinely glad you asked! It's most to do with the water temperature and the amount of agitation needed.

Cotton in general washes better when the water is hot and when there's a bunch of agitation, so a longer program. (On my machine the suggested program is 2h 20min at 60C, for example.) This is fine. Spin cycle it as harsh as you want to, too, as a plant fibre it soaks up a lot of liquid and dries slowly.

But when you wash synthetics, often containing elasthane and spandex etc, those do degrade very fast when the water is hot and there is a lot of agitation. Hot and long also leads to more microplastic shedding, I'm fairly sure! You may also want to use a different detergent for the two, or different amounts. They also dry faster, so less spinning required, less wear on the clothing and washing machine, and less energy expended.

@Willow Oh yes, it's basically my nemesis. It depends on how much is on there, and what it smells like, sometimes the only thing that works is washing it 5-12 times and suffering.

But! I've found that Marseille soap works pretty well. (It's a type of traditional olive oil based block soap. As soap as you can get, really. I assume Castile soap works similarly.)
First I'll reaaaaaaally lather the garments in the sink with the soap and some comfortably warm water, mostly rinse that off, lather again, rinse it again... You can sort of tell when gunk stops coming off, when it feels less slippery, or the smell changes?
Then you just need to rinse it really really well, because bar soap isn't super good inside a washing machine in large quantities, though a little doesn't hurt. Put in like double the detergent you'd usually use, wash normally.
If that didn't do it, or it feels fine but smells bad, wash it with a cup of table vinegar, or 3 tablespoons of white vinegar.

@nddev Yes! To both dust mites and bacteria. But also the higher temperatures kill the yeasts from human skin, which are generally not harmful or rot the fabrics, but can transfer between people using the same laundry: everybody can get itchy feet if somebody has cursed socks.

Some people are also deeply allergic to fabric softener and there's residue flaking off of people wearing conditioned clothing that gets on everything as a very fine dust, not to mention the VOCs that get breathed in. Please everybody stop using fabric conditioner!

@meena Yes!
The smell is either mildew and/or bacteria, both of which thrive on the wet human matter left on the textiles and the fibres themselves.
Depending on how long it's been and how much has grown, you might be able to get away with putting it to air out and dry in bright sunlight: UV radiation kills a lot of microbes and ozone breaks apart the organic compounds that produce the smell.

If it's been a *while* or the laundry has been left wet and smelly enough times for it to permeate the seams etc., the simplest option is to wash it very hot - 60C and up, preferably 70C. (140F to 158F)
These temps kill most microbial life. Though bacteria starts going at lower temperatures mildew, mould, yeasts take hotter. The detergent washes the broken down organic compounds away.

If it can't be washed hot, there's always acid or alkaline/base! Soaking it in a white vinegar solution (a cup per bucket) or with soda or borax (half a cup in a bucket? Somebody else might know). I just use vinegar since it's technically safe to eat. 😄​
You can also just pour two cups of table vinegar in the washing machine and wash it all cold if you don't want to mess around with a bucket or the sink. And then wash it another time with normal temperature and detergent.

@amberage Yeaaaaah, my bullshit senses are tingling with the "30C only" label on plant fibres at the best of times. At the very least it should take 40C without issue! There's no good reason why cotton (+elasthane) shouldn't withstand 60C! If they cut corners and didn't prewash and thus pre-shrink the fabric, it can shrink, but this really shouldn't be an issue.

I read somewhere that some percentage of human yeasts survive the 40C wash and may give you foot problems, so you should probably chuck socks into the hotter wash sometimes, too. 🤔

@4d3fect Oh yes, makes sense! I knew there had to be some compound to make the liquid shelf stable for years on end, so the antifungal makes sense even if it's been so long I had no memory of seeing one on the bottle.

I buy a cheap generic fragrance free powder that has been approved by the Finnish Allergy & Asthma Association so it's pretty stripped down of anything that doesn't need to be there! Dissolving in warm water is probably a good step, I tend to administer it straight onto the drum because it tends to gum up the dispenser thingy, and the hot water will hit it right away anyway.