How can I brighten my white clothes and linens?

Question

All my life I have only been able to get one good wear out of my white clothes and one good use out of my white linens. As soon as I place my clothes and linens in the doom machine, they get dingy and loose their glow. I have a washer with multiple compartments:

- Detergents get poured directly into the wash

- Softener gets poured into a compartment and mixed with water

- Bleach gets poured into another compartment.

I have tried soaking my whites for 15 minutes in the wash, and placing pure and/or diluted bleach into the bleach compartment. Nothing seems to work. I tried washing without softener to see if it was staining my clothes and that didn't work either.

How can I:

1) Brighten my dingy whites

2) Prevent my new whited from becoming dingy

Answer 1

Well, aside from that silly detergent that claims to beat the "dingies".

I've used Mrs Smith's Bluing... just follow the instructions on the bottle and your whites become SNOW white again.

Answer 2

The doom machine?  Lol.  I use a scoop each of detergent, OxyClean, and Biz in my white loads.  I let the clothes soak in the washer for half an hour or so then let them go through the full wash cycle.  My whites look really good.  I might suggest you check to make sure you aren't overloading the doom machine, so the clothes get rinsed well enough.  You might even let them go through the rinse cycle twice.  

Sometimes bleach causes more harm than good - I have better luck with the other products.

Answer 3

~~Bleach is hard on cloth and eventually starts yellowing things. Put your soap in and softener is fine too. Add white vinegar to your pre-treatment compartment or if you don't have that add about a cup  directly inside the load. Then put hydrogen peroxide to your bleach dispense (I just fill mine up), wash as you usually do and give them a double rinse. I promise they will be soft, white, and very fluffy again. May take a couple of washes this way if their is allot of soap build up, but as you keep washing this way they keep looking better and better!~~

Answer 4

Add Mrs Stewart's Bluing,  The human eye sees a bluish white as the whitest white  

Answer 5

Put a cup of baking soda in the wash water. It works well for me. If you have hard water you might also try Iron Out follow directions on bottle.

Answer 6

Try baking soda or some special soap made for whites. You can also wash them with blue clothes(light color) . All techniques work for me.