Our exercise clothes drawer
Nobody wants to be the smelly person at the gym. Body odors in our modern-day culture are considered embarrassing and can make pretty much anyone self conscious. So when some of my moisture wicking exercise gear started developing a bad smell even after laundering I of course started thinking that it was somehow my fault!
But fear not, those odors on the one hand are a common issue with those hi-tech fabrics (so it wasn’t me!!), on the other hand they are not permanent and you can find ways to remove existing smells and keep new ones from appearing.
Head on over to Olga’s Laundry Blog to read the full post on keeping your exercise gear stink-free.
Cranraspberry Blog 
I have had this issue before. But, after reading your Walmart Persil post and some other sites, I realized that the issue most likely was fabric softener. I was just doing two washes, colors and whites primarily, then towels, which used the anti-bacterial rinse and no fabric softener.
Now, I use the persil megapearls (colors and white varieties). And do:
Synthetic load (nylon, spandex clothing, polyester) no cotton, which obviously contains the exercise clothes. Just megapearls in pre-wash as well. No fabric softener
Light clothing: Whites and light grey, cotton or cotton blend which is primarily cotton (fabric softener + regular megapearls)
Color clothing: Coton or cotton blend using Megapearls Color + Fabric Softener
Bath Towels – Megapearls color + Anti-bacterial rinse
Microfiber cloths – Megapearls colors and sometimes add the anti-bacterial rinse. Or if smelly may do Sanitize wash.
Only stuff that ends up in dryer is Towels, Microfiber cloths, socks and underwear. All other clothes are hung cause I end up with my clothes shrinking otherwise.
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Just realized I missed this comment – thanks for sharing Todd! I think you have a great routine. Do you wash the synthetics is cold water, or do you also ignore the instructions and use warm/hot?
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Borax. Buy a box of Borax, and a add a tablespoon in with powder detergent. It’ll take out the smell of anything, and it’s very gentle on fabrics.
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Hey Mitchell, I realized I missed your comment. Thanks for sharing! The only issue I’ve had with borax is the amount of suds it causes – we don’t even have soft water, but for some reason I get crazy suds with it (especially if using liquid detergent).
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Hey Olga! (that was my great g’mas name too =-) I love your blog–Thank you!!
I live in Florida and love to run outdoors-6 miles 3-4x week as my cardio in addition to my weight training workouts. I pay my bills as a professional singer/dancer/actor/stuntman and still find myself in various dance classes and tumbling a few days a week to stay on top of my game-needless to say-lots of technical fabrics to be washed!
I’ve used the sports detergents you mentioned (minus the Miele) and the Win brand gives me 2nd best results-(and Win now makes a “free of” formula) but my all time favorite of many years and hundreds of washes later is still SportsSuds-its a fine powder and its free of fragrance-optical brighteners-dyes-and anything else that can gunk up the microscopic pores of technical fibers. I get it from amazon and the wash loads are as labeled when you use the 1TBS scoop they include. I was used to using a whole lot more of the Tide powder HE with bleach alt-or the persil mega in the green bag with blue specs, so it took me a LOT of self control to trust one Tablespoon to get a full front load of technical fabrics clean in a Cold/Cold wash–but it ALWAYS does! I use it on microfiber towels too!
just my experience-and as you know,,,,the expermenting is the fun part!
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Hey Beau, thanks so much for chiming in!
Your description made me super curious to try out
– hey, I’ll take any excuse I can to buy another detergent, haha. I reached out to the company to see if they sell samples, since it’s a little on the pricey side. Hopefully they’ll be able to help me out!
Sport Suds
Thanks again – I love it when people share these kinds of things.
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