Counteract smelly dishcloths

Now you can't tell me that this has never been an issue for you - a dishcloth that's smelling a little "off".

It seemed that all of my dishcloths had that smell, even when they were first pulled out of the drawer, so I thought I should try fixing that before I went and got new dishcloths. I've tried this vinegar and baking soda refresher for my bath towels, so figured I'd give it a try and see if it worked on the stronger smells of the dishcloths. Certainly cheap ingredients to be experimenting with even if it didn't work out.

I just grabbed by dutch-oven pot and put all the dishcloths in and filled it with water. Just be sure to leave some space for the boiling because it's going to get a little frothy. Then dump in a couple glugs of vinegar. Yep, that's an official measuring term from Mom. You know the sound it's going to make when you pour a liquid out of a big jug quickly, so a couple of those. If you really want me to guess, I'd say it would be about a half cup of vinegar.

Bring to a boil and let them bubble for about 10 minutes. I pushed them around every couple of minutes to make sure that they all had a chance in the vinegar bath. Remember, this is boiling vinegar so you might think it smells worse than the dishcloths and you're going to wonder if it's worth it. Don't worry, it is. :-)

Then I just dumped them out into the sink and let them drain.

The next step is to boil them with the baking soda, so I put a bit of water in the pot and sprinkled some baking soda in so that I could be sure it dissolved. Maybe a tablespoon or so. The cloths stay quite hot, so I used tongs to toss them all back into the pot and filled it up with water again. Boil for another 10 minutes or so. Some more bubbles!

Drain again and rinse. They do stay hot for a long time, so be careful. Then I put the cloths through a normal hot-water wash cycle in the washing machine. Seems to have fixed the problem! 

When I was researching this after I had gone through the process, one of the suggestions to avoiding smelly dishcloths is to just use a new one every time you want to wipe something up. Seems rather unrealistic to me, so I think I'll just spend the 30 minutes and a cost of about 20 cents for the vinegar and baking soda to do this again. 

WARNING: If you have a weak stomach, don't look at these next pictures. 

This is the colour of the water after boiling in the baking soda. What's most disturbing to me is that I had pulled most of these cloths "clean" from the drawer. Ya, not so clean I guess.....

~Lisa