Help! How much vinegar? White vinegar or red cider? Any other tricks?
My comforter stinks like a wet dog :(. How can I save it? Last night I was crawling around looking for dog puke it smelled that bad.
Oh, and new rule since disc disease diagnosis: no dogs on the bed. Joey cheats once in a blue moon. Dogs haven’t been on the bed -for more than two minutes- in four months.
I’ve washed it with baking soda. Washed it with vinegar. Added fabric softener to help it smell good. It still stinks.
Is there a reason you can’t put in in the washer (or go to a laundromat for a big washer) and let it spin around with regular detergent?
I do this even with down comforters -and then they go in the dryer, too.
Fundamentally if it stinks or is gross enough that I don’t want to sleep under it, then it has the following options:
1.) get thrown out immediately without passing go
2.) get One Last Chance in the washer/dryer, upon which it will either
2.a) be fine, and get to stay
or
2.b) be ruined, and get tossed anyway.
I throw mine in the wash. I let it soak for a bit. I have a duvet cover over my down comforter, but I wash both. I also use Tide w/ Febreeze and it seems to do a really good job.
I washed some of my MIL’s polarfleece throws that had been sitting on the couch and getting very stinky. Dog smell and other nasty things, plus lots of residue from drier sheets, they felt “waxy” or “soapy”.
I washed them probably a grand total of six times.
I thought they were good after the first couple with vinegar (just fill up the beach dispenser) and one with baking soda, (about a quarter cup) and then tumble drying them. NOT. I took them out of the plastic bag I’d put them in and unfolded them and the smell just slapped me in the face.
So - I washed them about three more times, and LINE DRIED them, outside in the bright sun and the breeze. Took about three days of that serious airing (that’d be wash, line dry, wash, line dry etc) and even my SIL said they smelled like . . . nothing.
I was able to salvage quite a bit of her bedding by washing about three times and line drying, including all her pillows but one. That one was so impregnated with whatever it was (hairdressing? hairspray residue?) that it had hard lumps and I said enough.
I did a lot of investigation including researching how Febreze works in the hope it might help - but Febreze bonds to scent molecules and will wash out so what’s the point. Good luck and I hope you’re somewhere sunny and warm.
Add K.O.E. to the wash
[QUOTE=meupatdoes;6687496]
Is there a reason you can’t put in in the washer (or go to a laundromat for a big washer) and let it spin around with regular detergent?[/QUOTE]
Yes it has been washed a few times. Once just detergent. Once with vinegar + detergent. Once with baking soda + detergent.
It has never come out of the dryer fully dry. Maybe airing is the key. I don’t have a line but do have a railing I could toss it over though not much sun or breeze as it is sandwiched between the house and the shed.
A lot of white vinegar, a lot of soap, and an extra rinse. If that doesn’t do it, then get a new one.
Re-yes, as you discovered the dryer sheets are actually oil, to cut the static. And because of that you should check the removable dryer lint screen once a month or so. Hold it flat, and see if water runs through, and if not use warm water and a nylon scrub brush. The invisible lint, and crud from the dryer sheets/fabric softener/laundry soap additives can build up, block the screen mesh, and burn your dryer element out.
The dogs may not be at fault. The down filling may not have been correctly processed and cleaned. I once had a down sleeping bag that smelled like something you’d bait traps with.
I also used detergent + whichever additive. Comforters aren’t cheap, and these weren’t mine to give up on so at the time I was blessed with our often windy ridgetop location, I just hung them over the chain link fence. Pillows lay out on the lawn and got flipped a few times. This was one of the times that shift work came in handy, I’d get off work in the middle of the day and nap and wash and hang, repeat.
I think you might try the extra rinses. And if you have to, take the thing to a laundromat and use the giant driers to make sure it is completely dry. We’ve all left stuff in the washer for too long before and gotten that horrid sour stench, from otherwise freshly washed clothes. That little bit of moisture may be causing the problem.
While I was looking up the Febreze I got sidetracked into scent and odor, you’ve got something that is giving off a large molecule detectable as scent, foul or fair. If you put your comforter on the railing and use a box fan to blow air at it you’ll duplicate the breeze which is blowing those large molecules away from the fabric. Febreze operates by sequestering, ie it bonds to and surrounds the scent molecule (which begs the question how can you have scented Febreze?) so the molecule is still there, it just no longer registers with the scent receptors in your nose.
Washing is supposed to wash the molecules away, and drying with the breeze or a good drier airflow should blow the remaining molecules away. Even the bedding that was too beat up to reuse I was able to get the stink out and send to the animal shelter.
I take my down comforter to get dry cleaned. It’s been peed on by cats, puked on and covered in dog hair, and comes back fresh, clean and cat-pee-smell-free every time! They charge me $25, and it’s worth it because the comfortable is a beautiful discontinued Ralph Lauren one that I just can’t part with!
I love Odo-Ban for stinky stuff like that. Put it right in the washer with the detergent. You can get it lots of places like Walmart or Home Depot. My down comforter smells a little “off” if it doesn’t dry completely in the dryer. Use tennis balls in the dryer to fluff it up so it doesn’t clump.
I made the mistake of washing my barn jacket with a load of dog bedding and now my barn jacket smells like dog… I feel your pain. We have a front loader with all kinds of weird options, so I would set it for a prewash, then “extra dirty”, then an extra rinse (which will take about 2 hours!) and use detergent and some borax (cheap and useful for lots of things, found in the laundry section of the supermarket) and maybe some vinegar, too. I put the borax in with the detergent, then pour the vinegar all over the place but mostly where you’d put the bleach. You could also add an extra rinse and spin cycle at the end, just to drive the last of the soap and whatever out of there. Then dry it on low for a long, long time, maybe with some tennis balls or an old sneaker (you can also use polo wraps secured with a rubber band!). Hanging it in the sun would be optimal, but it’s winter… good luck and let us know what works.
I had a similar issue with a down comforter a few years back. Turned out it wasn’t getting fully dried, so it was just getting funky again. I fixed the problem with two times through the dryer and then hanging it over a stair railing and using a hair dryer on any stubbornly wet areas.
[QUOTE=Marshfield;6687910]
Add K.O.E. to the wash[/QUOTE]
I use both of these for the dogs bedding and people bedding that the dogs and cats sleep on. I tried several products and this routine seems to work best for me:
First I soak the offending laundry in Tide plus some Oxi Clean and Odo Ban. I like to let it soak all day or overnight. Then let the washer do it’s thing.
I then run it through a second time (no soaking needed), again with Tide, Oxi Clean and Odo Ban. During the last rinse I add K.O.E. (they also make a Laundry version of K.O.E. with is just as good).
Laundry comes out smelling clean and odor free.
The Odo Ban is great because it not only kills strong odors but it kills 99.9% of germs too. Makes me feel good to know that! :winkgrin:
http://www.odoban.com/products.php
(FWIW, I have never had any luck using vinegar or Fabreeze for animal smells. Stuff just comes out smelling different but not smelling good or clean.)
I add a little bit of bleach to my down comforters - perhaps 1/4 cup to a load. It’s not enough to damage them (so far - my comforters are 10+ years old and my goose down pillows are at least 40+ years old) but it is enough to keep them sweet. All else fails…try a little bleach.
Borax. It gets the smells out. Honestly.
things to try:
LONG soak with lots of vinegar, as in leave it in the tub for 24 hours +
then wash in hot water with oxi clean or one of the enzymatic or bio pet odor removers, possibly repeat.
sunlight works too, if you have a place where you can hang it such that both sides get full dose for a while.
Chlorine bleach is fine for down , I use it on my pillows and duvet all the time, but I don’t think it works on smell like it does for other non-down items.
What you don’t want to do is put it in hot dryer until you are sure that the stink is gone, b/c the heat will set the stink like it can set a stain.
Once the stink is gone, I, too, like the dryer balls to fluff up & help get all the down completely dry. You can get them at the $1 store these days.
Good luck & let us know what works for you.
I did a COTH search with keywords stinky, smelly, and odor in titles. Fun reading! I soaked some smelly synthetic athletic shirts in vinegar while I walked the dogs then laundered them with an extra rinse cycle. They are hang drying indoors now. Tonight I’ll see how it turned out.
For the comforter, I’m sure it’s fake. Definitely not down. And the dog smell is definitely there! I wonder if he puked off the side of the bed and I just can’t find it. The smell is that strong. And sudden.
I’ll go to Walmart to look for Odoban. On their website, Odoban gets no results though on Odobban’s site, they list Walmart as a source.
Try Home Depot then, I saw it there too.
I add a cup or two of good old fashioned Arm and Hammer Baking Soda to stinky washables and have had great results with it. It’s helped get the stink out of even the smelliest dog blankets.
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