The Simple Way To Make Your Kitchen Towels Look New Again

I always thought she was overreacting—isn’t it a kitchen towel’s purpose to get dirty? Can’t you just wash it? But after setting up shop with my own kitchen towels, I’ve seen the light.

After years of use, my kitchen towels are the color of overcooked cabbage, with some flecks of broccoli green and an errant yellow mustard smudge—like a Pollock, but also . . . not.

I’ve tried washing them in the industrial washing machines at my local laundromat, but to no avail. 

What’s a girl to do? 

Turns out throwing your ragged, stained towels in with your other laundry (along with some lavender fabric softener) is the worst thing I could’ve done, and over the years, probably further baked on the worst of the stains.

According to Bailey Carson, a home and cleaning expert at Angi, a home cleaning company, I should have been washing my towels separately and without fabric softener, which can make them greasy and gross. 

"Many fabric softeners are made from a silicone oil, so they can make your towels greasy and less absorbent," she says. Another tip that she says results in soft and fluffy towels is to add a quarter to half cup of vinegar to your load, or to pre-soak the towels in vinegar before washing.

"This will restore their fluffy texture and get rid of any soap residue that might make them feel rough or stiff," she says.

She also suggests using bleach, which I never use because I wash all my laundry together in one big chromatic heap (rent life!), plus my towels have some colorful stripes on them that I don’t necessarily want bleached away.  

To tackle these chromatic towels, I turned to our winning stain remover—OxyClean—which has a color-safe bleaching agent. And boy did it work.

After soaking the towels in a mixture of OxyClean and water for six hours, then washing them with even more OxyClean, my towels emerged so fresh and so clean, I almost didn’t recognize them. And while they still look a bit ragged and a few deep stains remained (Carson recommends letting your towels air dry to avoid wear and tear), I’d say my mom would be proud.

Photo: Catherine Falls Commercial, Getty Images