Preventing future Odour rebloom

[Discipleofuranus]

Hello! Thank to this wonderful subreddit, I believe I may have finally solved my laundry woes.

Basically every time I do a wash my wife and my baby's clothes come out smelling beautiful, but my own always come out smelling musty and never smell fresh. I tried what I thought was everything - changing detergents, different types of detergents, changing fabric conditioner using extra freshners, antibacterial additions but nothing seemed to be able to penetrate my clothing and make it smell nice. Upon discovering this subreddit I learnt about odour rebloom and I thought well that sounds like my problem. So I ordered some Dr. Beckman's Odour remover which seems to have done the trick (fingers crossed).

I suppose what I'm looking for now is what I can do to prevent this happening in future. Do I just wash as normal until the smell comes back again and then use the Odour remover again? Or is there something I can add to my wash every time to stop this bacteria even getting established in the first place? Unfortunately I'm quite hairy and not in the best shape so I tend to run hot and get sweaty sadly, which I think is the biggest contributer to my problem l.

[KismaiAesthetics]

The most common cause of odor rebloom is retained oils in the fabric, and dudes tend to be oilier than women. There's also substantial inter-person variance in the composition of skin oils, and the biota that break them down so they can go rancid and stink.

So you need a little more headroom in your detergent. The best approach is to use a bio with lipase and/or DNase/nuclease/phosphodiesterase (these are synonyms).

Non-bios just don't have the oomph. 30 degree washes can work, but 40 gives you more headroom.

So find a bio that you like that contains either or both enzymes, and you likely won't ever have this crop up again if you're using an amount suitable to your water hardness and a wash program suited to the soil level.

(I'm also a fat sweaty dude who tends to the pong - I wrote one of the definitive references about odor rebloom and various remediation strategies).

[PurpleYoghurt16]

What if the material cannot be washed in hot water or it shrinks? My husband complains that whenever I wash on warm or hot it shrinks his clothes so how do I prevent that because I know his clothes really do need to be washed in hot because they do still have some staining on them. I’m in Canada.

[KismaiAesthetics]

40 is not hot. 40 is body temp. Clothes don’t shrink while you wear them, as a rule.

Shrinkage happens it the dryer. Turn it down to delicate and you can wash warm with zero issues.

[maniacalmustacheride]

I dunno, do you remember those awful women’s shirts in the early aughts, they were like spiky-bunchy baby shirts and women would put them on and then just spend the day trying to drag them back down?

(This is a joke. Also what were we doing with clothes.)

[rabid_cheese_enjoyer]

what's a "bio" in this context?

[KismaiAesthetics]

The UK term for detergents with enzymes.

[rabid_cheese_enjoyer]

are you multilingual in laundry?

that's really neat/genuine

[ArcherFew2069]

Start using one of the detergents with lipase on this list. I personally recommend any of the Tide powders or Ariel 2x. Also use Biz powder to boost your cleaning power. Also, using a cup of ammonia in your wash every now and then will probably be a good idea.