Tired of gross sweat stains on your sheets and blankets? See this amazing tip on how to easily remove sweat stains from sheets. Your laundry will brand new!
Recently I was poking around on a chat forum for cleaning. Yes, really, that is how I spend my free time. I can't help it, I love coming up with new ways to clean things.
I noticed multiple people mentioned using dish soap on clothes to get rid of the ring around the collar. It makes perfect sense.
We use dish soap on dishes to get rid of grease, but I never considered that same grease-fighting powers could work on clothes too.
I couldn't wait to try it out. I grabbed my favorite dish soap and got to work! If you are tired of sweat stained sheets check out these simple tips on how to get sweat stains out of sheets. You won't believe how well it works!
Check out my nasty mattress pad below! It is so gross.
How To Remove Sweat Stains From Sheets
If you are dealing with sweat stains on sheets look no further than this simple tip. You can easily remove sweat stains from sheets in your washing machine.
Whenever I wash them I always add some borax to the load to try to get the stains out. It helps, but they are always still there.
Since my mattress pad stains looked very similar to collar stains on clothes I figured I would give it a try. I decided to add a little extra cleaning power and use the dish soap too.
My sheets are a light tan color, so the sweat stains are difficult to see. However, the mattress pad is white and the sweat stains are absolutely disgusting.
Luckily the combo of dish soap and borax did the trick.
So grab some laundry detergent, borax, dish soap, and of course, sweaty sheets or blankets and let's get started!
Let The Sweat Stained Sheets Soak
To start, you need some really how water. To clean the stains off your sheets or blankets start the washer on the hottest setting possible.
Add the sheets or blankets to the washer. Make sure they have plenty of room to agitate in the machine.
Then add about 1 cup of borax and 2 tablespoons dish soap to the washing machine. Depending on what brand of dish soap you use you may want to add a little more or a little less. Borax for sweat stains works great!
I really don't recommend using a vegetable-based soap like Dr. Bronners here. Good old fashioned Dawn or Palmolive works best.
Next, let the machine start running for a few minutes to make sure that all of the dish soap and borax are mixed into the water.
This is a really important step because you want to make sure the dish soap fully mixes in with the water and gets to all the sheets.
Then stop your machine and let the load sit for about 1 hour. If it is a little longer than an hour don't worry. That is what makes this tip so easy. Set it and go run some errands.
Wash the Sheets
Now that we have let the sheets soak for an hour or so you can now wash them to remove the sweat stains.
After 1 hour start the machine and let it run all the way through. I usually set the machine for an extra rinse at the end when I am doing this too.
If you have an extra rinse button I recommend using it. It will help to remove more of the sweat stain and get out any detergent or residue in your sheets.
I usually recommend using the extra rinse cycle on all sheet and towel loads.
Repeat if Necessary
When the machine is done remove the sheets and blankets to see if the stains are gone.
If they aren't you can always go through the steps one more time.
Make sure you are using hot water and enough dish soap.
If there is just a small spot or two left you may want to pretreat the sweat stain by adding a little squirt of dish soap to the stain.
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Then let it sit for about 5 minutes before rewashing.
The first time I tried this process I had to do it twice to get the years worth of stains from our stuff.
Now one time usually takes care of all the stains. Once all the stains are gone I like to wash it one time through with regular detergent.
Follow the drying directions on the items and you are done!
I can not believe the difference it made in my mattress pad. You can see the before and after below. It is absolutely amazing!
Preventing Sweat Stains
If you regularly have sweat stains on sheets you can help prevent them from getting bad by adding a small squirt of dish soap to your load each time you wash them.
This will help keep the body oils and sweat stains away. It's easy to do and only takes a minute.
I am amazed at how well this simple trick does at removing all of our disgusting stains.
It works great and the machine does all of the work. If only all stains were this easy. 😉
I have found the borax/dish soap combo works great to get your pillow sweat stains out too. You can see how to machine wash your pillows here.
Lindsey Mozgai says
My fiance sweats a lot in bed, but it doesn't appear to leave any stains. Maybe it's because we have dark sheets? I know they're there because when he first gets up you can see them. Should I do this method or would a regular wash cycle do the trick?
Julie says
If you don't see stains you probably don't need to bother with the method. Our sheets are darker so I don't notice it. It's our mattress pad that always looks awful.
Briana says
I have white linen napkins and tablecloths passed down from my grandmother that have stains. I wonder if this would be safe to try on them. Anyone have an idea?
Julie says
I would be a little nervous to use this on an heirloom. Maybe try it on one napkin first and see if it does any damage? Definitely make sure you run it on the gentle cycle if you try it.
Julie says
How would you recommend doing this in an HE, front-loading washer?
Julie says
Hi Julie! My sister was asking me the same question. I would recommend trying the borax on the hottest setting and maybe skip the dish soap. She is going to try it out with dish detergent instead so I will let you know how that goes. I have heard that dish detergent won't suds like dish soap does.
Julie says
Yes, please let me know!