To start, you need some really how water. To clean the stains off your sheets or blankets start the washer on the hottest setting possible.
Add the sheets or blankets to the washer. Make sure they have plenty of room to agitate in the machine.
Then add about 1 cup of borax and 2 tablespoons dish soap to the washing machine. Depending on what brand of dish soap you use you may want to add a little more or a little less. Borax for sweat stains works great!
I really don’t recommend using a vegetable-based soap like Dr. Bronners here. Good old fashioned Dawn or Palmolive works best.
Next, let the machine start running for a few minutes to make sure that all of the dish soap and borax are mixed into the water.
This is a really important step because you want to make sure the dish soap fully mixes in with the water and gets to all the sheets.
Then stop your machine and let the load sit for about 1 hour. If it is a little longer than an hour don’t worry. That is what makes this tip so easy. Set it and go run some errands.
Wash the Sheets
Now that we have let the sheets soak for an hour or so you can now wash them to remove the sweat stains.
After 1 hour start the machine and let it run all the way through. I usually set the machine for an extra rinse at the end when I am doing this too.
If you have an extra rinse button I recommend using it. It will help to remove more of the sweat stain and get out any detergent or residue in your sheets.
I usually recommend using the extra rinse cycle on all sheet and towel loads.
Repeat if Necessary
When the machine is done remove the sheets and blankets to see if the stains are gone.
If they aren’t you can always go through the steps one more time.
Make sure you are using hot water and enough dish soap.
If there is just a small spot or two left you may want to pretreat the sweat stain by adding a little squirt of dish soap to the stain.
Then let it sit for about 5 minutes before rewashing.
The first time I tried this process I had to do it twice to get the years worth of stains from our stuff.
Now one time usually takes care of all the stains. Once all the stains are gone I like to wash it one time through with regular detergent.
Follow the drying directions on the items and you are done!
I can not believe the difference it made in my mattress pad. You can see the before and after below. It is absolutely amazing!
Preventing Sweat Stains
If you regularly have sweat stains on sheets you can help prevent them from getting bad by adding a small squirt of dish soap to your load each time you wash them.
This will help keep the body oils and sweat stains away. It’s easy to do and only takes a minute.
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I am amazed at how well this simple trick does at removing all of our disgusting stains.
It works great and the machine does all of the work. If only all stains were this easy. 😉