Whether we exercise an hour a day or sweat in work clothes all day long, our stuff is going to get stinky. Maybe we personally don’t mind our own smell but, from experience I know, the people who live with us probably will mind.

And, though we put those clothes in the wash and while fresh and folded they seem to smell nice, the moment those clothes come into contact with warm skin, for some reason the embedded stinky smell starts coming out of them, even before we start sweating again!

Out of compassion I have become a bit self-conscious about how my clothes smell to others. So I’ve tried various remedies to remove the stink.

The one that I have settled on and works better than anything else I’ve tried, is to soak my clothes in a simple vinegar + water solution. In a small utility bucket, I mix about half a cup of vinegar with enough water to submerge the bundle of clothes.

With the clothes now soaking, there is only the vinegar smell itself coming off the bucket. I leave my clothes soaking in this solution (for days) until I am ready to run a full load of laundry and then rinse these in water to remove most of the vinegar solution.

When I am traveling, if I can’t find a bucket to borrow, I carry a 40 liter dry bag and both soak and hand-wash my clothes in this bag.

If I am about to fly home and have stinky exercise clothes I can soak these in the vinegar solution for even just 15 minutes, then rinse, ring out the water and then store them in a plastic bag then pack them. They will not give off any unpleasant odor in my luggage! It’s wonderful.

It works so well, its cheap, and I can find a bottle of vinegar anywhere I travel in the world. I am now wondering why it took me so long to figure this out.

***

© 2019, Mediterra International, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Mediterra International, LLC and thelongevityathlete.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.