How to Strip Laundry: The Non-Toxic Guide to Fresher, Cleaner Fabrics

How to Strip Your Laundry in 6 Easy Steps

Once you have all your laundry stripping recipe ingredients gathered, it’s time to make the magic happen. Here’s how to strip your laundry in a few simple steps.

1. Fill your bathtub or a large basin with hot water. The heat is what opens up fabric fibers and activates the cleaning agents. Always check care labels first. If an item isn't safe for hot water, skip the strip.
2. Add all five ingredients and stir well. Use an old mop handle, a long wooden spoon, or something similar. If you're using your hands, wear rubber gloves—Borax can irritate skin with direct contact.
3. Add your laundry to the soak. Keep whites and lights separate from colors. Dyes can bleed in hot water, which partly accounts for why the water looks so murky. Submerge everything fully and swish to saturate.
4. Soak for at least 4 hours, or overnight. Come back every hour to stir and push fabrics back under the surface. The longer and more consistently agitated, the more residue is released.
5. Transfer to the washing machine. Don't add detergent or fabric softener. Run a regular rinse or wash cycle to flush out the loosened residue. A double-rinse setting is ideal if your machine has it.
6. Dry as recommended. Tumble dry or hang dry according to the care label. Skip the dryer sheets. You just stripped all that residue out, so don’t reintroduce it.

For more, read: Dryer Sheets 101: Are Dryer Sheets Bad (and What to Use Instead)

Does Laundry Stripping Remove Stains?

This is one of the most common questions about laundry stripping, and the honest answer is: not really—at least, not the way a stain remover does.

Laundry stripping is designed to remove residue and buildup. What it can do is remove the layer of grime and residue that traps stains deeper in fibers and makes them look worse over time. Think of it as clearing the environment around a stain rather than attacking the stain itself.

For actual stains—grass, wine, sweat marks, food—treat them with an enzyme-based stain remover before stripping your laundry. Enzyme cleaners work by breaking down the organic compounds in stains, so the stain is already loosened before the soak begins. That's why we recommend treating stains with Truly Free Enzyme Stain Remover and adding it to your laundry stripping recipe; it creates a far more effective combination than relying on stripping alone.

The bottom line: laundry stripping and stain treatment work best together, not as substitutes for each other.

When to Strip Your Clothes and Linens

Not everything in your closet or linen cabinet needs the stripping treatment. Knowing when and how often to use laundry stripping will help you get results without putting unnecessary wear on your fabrics.

Use laundry stripping when you notice:

• Towels that have lost their softness and absorbency. Fabric softener film is often the culprit. EWG has flagged that fabric softeners and dryer sheets can contain chemicals that harm your health, damage the environment, and pollute indoor air.
• Bed sheets that feel rough, look yellowed, or carry a persistent smell
• Workout clothes or activewear with embedded odor that survives a regular wash
• Thrifted or secondhand textiles you want to reset before bringing them into your home
• White or light-colored clothing that has gone inexplicably dull

Stripping should be an occasional intervention, not a frequent one. Doing it too often can weaken fabric fibers over time. A few times a year is plenty for most households. For items like activewear or frequently used towels, the timing is often driven by the smell test.

Fabrics That Are Safe for Laundry Stripping

As a general rule, laundry stripping works best on whites, lights, and colorfast fabrics, meaning they can be washed in hot water without fading or color bleed. Never combine colors with whites in the same soak.

Safe to strip:

• White and off-white cotton towels
• Light-colored bed sheets and pillowcases
• Colorfast cotton clothing
• Heavily used linens and household textiles

Avoid stripping:

• Dark fabrics since dyes can run in hot water
• Wool—hot water strips lanolin, the natural oil that protects the fiber
• Spandex and athletic wear. The stripping solution's alkalinity can degrade elasticity over time
• Silk and delicate fabrics
• Anything requiring cold water washing or dry cleaning only

When in doubt, check the care label. If the item can't handle hot water, it can't handle stripping.

For more, read: The Ultimate Guide to Laundry Care Label Symbols and Meanings