seawater

[adrian_turtle]

Is there some special way to wash seawater out of cloth? I know the ocean washes things clean metaphorically, but it makes them dirty and smelly and itchy in the mundane sense. I didn't think it would be a big deal, but my current washing machine is not impressively competent. I have detergent that's good at getting the smell of secondhand smoke out of my clothes, but it's not working for this. It's fine for the clothes I just wore at the beach, but the shirts I actually wore in the water still smell of the sea after 2 washes and there was even a tiny bit of odor transfer to other stuff that was in the washing machine. I had a good time at the beach, and the reminder was nice for a while, but it's getting to be annoying.

I know there's something you can add to the wash-water to get chlorine smell out of swimsuits. Is there something like that for seawater?

Comments

[rinue]

The usual standards are:

soak in hot or boiling water
put out in the sun (not that it's been an option much this week)
add baking soda
add white vinegar

My go-to first step tends to be putting the offending item in a plugged sink, boiling a kettle of water, pouring it over, adding a tablespoon of white vinegar, and letting it soak for an hour or so, and then rinsing with cold water and laundering normally.

[rinue]

(I'm working on the assumption that the smell is not the salt water, which you have almost certainly gotten out, but some kind of microorganism that got caught in the clothes - some variation of mold/mildew/seaweed/spores/teenyfish - which boiling water or vinegar should really take care of but normal washing wouldn't necessarily.)

[adrian_turtle]

Thanks. I did get one of the cotton shirts and half the cross-contaminated stuff in the sunshine yesterday afternoon. I'd rather not use boiling water on the bra or the swimsuit, for obvious reasons...but thinking of it as a mildew problem is helpful.

[amaebi]

So far as I know, just repeated rinsings.

[adrian_turtle]

Thanks.