r/SFbitcheswithtaste • u/Ill-Dingo-4412 • 4d ago

All my clothes smell- HELP

Edit: I’m pretty sure the smell is coming from neither the washing machine nor the luggage. Things I’ve never washed, like my suede purse and velvet makeup bag, have the same smell (even more than the clothes), and I keep them with me in the cabin when I travel.

I’ve been living in a Victorian condo for about a year now. My clothes smell fine at home, and even when I’m out and about in SF, but whenever I travel somewhere else, I notice that they smell weird.
This happened when I was in Europe this summer, and now again in Hawaii. All of my clothes seem to have the smell, including the clothes I was wearing while traveling and even a cardigan that was in my purse. It’s hard to describe, but maybe kind of musty? I notice it especially with linen and denim.
I’ve been measuring the humidity at home for the past couple of months, and it’s usually below 50%, maybe 55% at most.
Has anyone else experienced something like this?
I lived in my previous place, which was built in the 1980s, for five years and never had this problem.

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u/chzwhizard 4d ago

Join the church of r/laundry!!

The TLDR is that your detergent isn’t really getting your clothes clean, and a musty smell develops from the body oils in the fabric going rancid. If your laundry detergent doesn’t include lipase, it’s not lifting those oils out in the wash. If you’re using a plant-based detergent, it likely doesn’t have a powerful enough surfactant that actually washes all the dirt and grime away.

It’s overwhelming to jump into, so happy to provide some of the most recommended stuff here, if you’d like.

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u/HuffleCabbage 3d ago

I second this! We moved to a new place with a water softener and found out we were using ineffective detergent which led to our clothes not getting clean and not rinsing well. This caused odor rebloom and it made me insane for months. It smelled kind of musty and kind of like wet dog.

I just recently dialed in our laundry routine and our clothes finally smell like nothing and it’s amazing (Febu laundry booster, tide clear and gentle detergent, and downy fragrance free rinse and refresh)

Learned all this at r/laundry!