As a vacation rental host, it’s my job to make sure all the laundry is clean, sanitized and fresh smelling!  I get asked a lot exactly how do we keep our white towels looking like new, so I thought I’d write about it!

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How we keep our guest towels sparkling white!

Sometimes cleaning our towels can be a challenge.  For the most part, our guests are wonderful and leave our houses clean, but every now and then, we have guests that just don’t understand how vacation rentals go, especially with Airbnb.  I think they just don’t realize they’re someone’s home and they treat it more like they would a hotel, which have big fancy washing machines and a whole crew to do the laundry.

clean white towels

But I’ve learned some great tricks and tips along the way, to not only get out nasty stains, but also make sure our towels are sanitized as well.  So here’s my step by step approach that we use for our towels.

• Step one:  as soon as the guests leave, we exam all the towels for any stains.  If we find something, we immediately spray OxiClean Stain out and let it sit on the stain for at least 15 minutes.
• Step two:  we soak the towels in the laundry tub with hot water and 1/4 cup bleach for at least 30 minutes.
• Step three:  after all the towels have soaked in bleach water, we throw them all into the washer with laundry detergent (we currently love Kirkland pods from Costco), and vinegar in the softener dispenser.  Did you know that fabric softener isn’t the greatest thing for towels? Have you ever tried vinegar?  It makes the towels fluffy & clean!  We use hot water for our washing cycle as well.  Between the bleach and the hot water, germs don’t stand a chance!
• Step four:  after the wash cycle, we inspect the towels to make sure the stains came out.  If so, then we pop them in the dryer with two dryer sheets (we love Kirkland from Costco for these as well).  If any stains remained, then those particular towels get pulled out for “Step five”!!

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  OxiClean White Revive

• Step five:  for those pesky stains that just won’t come out, my fave product is Oxi Clean White Revive!  This stuff is amazing!  I just fill a bucket with hot water, add the recommended amount of powder and stir it well, add my towels and literally let them sit overnight.  The next morning, not only does my laundry area smell wonderful…..the stains are virtually gone!

Now I have had one or two stains, out of hundreds of washings, that just didn’t come out.  But I’ve also had gray towels…yes, they were our white towels….that I let soak overnight and you would have never known how nasty they were before washing!  When I first saw these gray towels in the bathroom of one of our houses, my first thought was the guest left them, as we didn’t have anything but white towels.  But alas, they were ours!  I have NO idea what the guest did to make them so gray!

So I highly recommend Oxi Clean White Revive.  And I don’t get any compensation for saying that!  What laundry tips do YOU have?  I’m always looking for new and better ways!