reusing towels

I tend to collect applicators, cloths I use for applying leather cleaner/glass cleaner etc and my microfibre towels and wash them with a powder that is dermatologicly (sp?) friendly and wash on a 40 Deg short wash.

I unfortunately drop the applicators & pick up dirt etc with the Microfibers, so I believe I have little choice! :o



K1 CERB
 
Wash MF's with Pinnacle MF Restorer after each use. Foam applicators typically use 1x and toss (some I'll hand down to use on windows, wheels or tires).
 
Unless your towels have become contaminated, you can wash your towels and re-use them. For cotton terry towels you’ll need laundry detergent, one pint of white vinegar and one pint of bleach for each load. The vinegar helps cut through the wax residue while the bleach acts as a whitener. After washing, always keep your towels in a clean safe place.
 
a PINT of bleach??!! If you are using MF towels, DO NOT USE BLEACH! I've tried chlorine bleach along with soap and vinegar for cotton terry's and it makes them stiff and can damage fiber content over time. If you need bleach to make them white, then your cleaning regimen is not as good as it should be. I don't mind a faint stain on the few terry towels I use.
 
I collect mine after I accumalate about 10-11 MFs and wash with Tide Free Liquid, warm water and then dry at low temp.
 
Spilchy said:
I've tried chlorine bleach along with soap and vinegar for cotton terry's and it makes them stiff and can damage fiber content over time. If you need bleach to make them white, then your cleaning regimen is not as good as it should be.
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If you've tried chlorine bleach along with soap and vinegar for cotton terry's and it makes them stiff and has damaged fiber content over time, then your cleaning regimen is not as good as it should be.
 
I reuse untill they get too dirty and I demote them to wheel/engine duty. I use Charlies soap and their APC as a pre spray on all my MF towels. They come out good as new.
 
Yeah, I reuse most everything, relegating them to nastier tasks as they get stained/worn/etc. Some of the towels I use on undercarriages must be over a dozen years old.



I haven't had much trouble with cross-contamination. I never mix my ERV/leather treatment/etc. towels with my other ones (in fact, I wash these at a laundermat), but wax/polish/etc. doesn't seem to cause any problems. Heh heh, it all comes out in the wash ;) A towel that was used for waxing last week might get used for windows this week, though I'll admit that my *good* glass MFs, that get used on fine optics, are always washed by themselves.
 
I have 45 Excel MFs that I use for paint and exterior glass, then a few dozen WalMart MFs from plastic/vinyl protectants, leather conditioners, etc..., and 15 WCD green MFs that are used for QEW washing. Each category gets washed separately, and I only wash them when the entire category (or very close) is "dirty". The WalMart ones gets pretty dirty sometimes, and I will throw them away if they get excessively stained.



I have a bunch of terry towels as well, but they are only used for drying tires or polishing metal. Even those are reused dozens of times.
 
It's probably best to keep towels of the same use together when washing(waxing, windows, cleaning), but how many people do it? The worst thing to do is wash your detailing towels at home in the same machine as your clothes!! Not very smart, especially if you have kids.
 
David Fermani said:
The worst thing to do is wash your detailing towels at home in the same machine as your clothes!!
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Why? My washing machine has a porcelin basket that is perfectly clean after washing my MF towels. There is no residue and the final rinse water is perfectly clear. I have wiped it with a paper towel and it is bone dry from the final spin and clean of any residual film.



I have been doing this for years. My father has allergies to all sorts of colognes, soaps, after shaves, etc... and has suffered no skin irritants from clothes done in the washing machine where my MF's are cleaned.



If anything, I'm more skeeved about using public washing machines in laundry mats and apartment complexes to wash my clothes that I wear, than washing dirty MF's in my own machine!



I'm guessing 90% of folks here wash their MF's in their own machines if they have one and have kids.
 
I have two kids and all that gets washed here goes into the same washer and there aren't any ill effects. Both me and my son have rather sensitive skin also.
 
I've always washed my MFs in my personal washer/dryer as well.



I live in an apartment currently, with a coin-op washer and dryer that the whole building (8 units) uses. Whenever I wash my MFs, I run a load of my clothes afterward just in case there was any residue. If there's any ill effects to the following load of laundry, I want it to be on my clothes. I'd hate for someone to wash a load of nice clothes and have some plastic polish polish residue on them or something.
 
Spilchy said:
Why? My washing machine has a porcelin basket that is perfectly clean after washing my MF towels. There is no residue and the final rinse water is perfectly clear. I have wiped it with a paper towel and it is bone dry from the final spin and clean of any residual film.



I have been doing this for years. My father has allergies to all sorts of colognes, soaps, after shaves, etc... and has suffered no skin irritants from clothes done in the washing machine where my MF's are cleaned.



If anything, I'm more skeeved about using public washing machines in laundry mats and apartment complexes to wash my clothes that I wear, than washing dirty MF's in my own machine!



I'm guessing 90% of folks here wash their MF's in their own machines if they have one.
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Just because there isn't any residue in the basket does't mean there isn't anything in the tub(I guess this what you would call what holds the basket). I would think the reason why your basket is clean is because the towels are slapping up against it, cleaning it. Our detail supplies have toxic chemicals in them(solvents, petrolems, acids, etc)that don't totally evacuate the washer. These chemicals are bad to touch and breathe. Notice how bad your hands look. My children have bad food and chemical allergies also and they break out even when I use Tide. We use special detergents that are hypo-allergenic and don't have perfumes or dyes. I also agree that public washing machines are grose. You never know who's washing what it them, but I wouldn't hesitate washing detail towels in them. When I build my detail garage at my house, I'm either going to have a separate washer/dryer or I'm going to the laundry mat.
 
I'm amazed that after al this time on this forum and all the discussions about fabric care that there are people who still don't seem to get it. This isn't rocket science folks, it's LAUNDRY!



1) DO NOT USE BLEACH... this is very poor advice. Bleach breaks down fibers and is quite harmful. Bleach serves one purpose and one only, to make white fabrics "LOOK" cleaner even if they aren't. All it does is whiten, nothing else. This isn't your tighty whities or your bed sheets or your best Sunday-Goin'-to-Meetiin' white shirt. Who cares how white a detailing towel is? I sure don't.

2) VINEGAR... using white vinegar in the wash cycle is a waste of vinegar! You use it in the final rinse to help fibers shed any excess detergents. Using it in the wash cycle serves no purpose.

3) USING THE SAME MACHINE AS YOUR CLOTHES... well of course you can. If your machine is leaving residue on the tub sides then it isn't doing a very good job of cleaning or rinsing is it? If you use hot water, and you always should, any residue will go down the drain. Now, if you still feel worried about this then an old laundrywoman's trick from the days of hand washing was to wash the tub with Epsom Salts. You can dissolve a half cup in an empty washer and run it through a quick wash cycle.



Of course all the other rules apply here... use only liquid detergent, use hot water, no bleach or fabric softeners, no dryer sheets.
 
DFTowel said:
Of course all the other rules apply here... use only liquid detergent, use hot water, no bleach or fabric softeners, no dryer sheets.
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Can you wash your towels with the same cleaner/degreaser that's already on the towel?
 
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