Will vinegar damage my clothes or towels?

Plain white vinegar is safe for almost all everyday cotton, towels, and most synthetics, and it won't fade colors the way chlorine bleach can. Use one to two cups in a hot cycle with no detergent. The only real rule: never run it in the same load or close in time with chlorine bleach, since the two together create toxic gas.

Why do my towels smell musty only when they get wet?

Because the mildew and its residue are still living deep in the fibers and detergent buildup, just dormant while dry. Heat and moisture from your shower wake it back up. That's the sign you need a hot vinegar wash plus an oxygen-bleach or enzyme soak, not just another normal cycle. If it survives two or three full treatments, the towel is likely permanently colonized and worth replacing.

The musty smell keeps coming back across all my laundry. What now?

When clean clothes go musty again fast, the source usually isn't the clothes. Check your washer's door gasket and drawer for mildew, and look at the room: damp basement, humid bathroom, or a closet on an exterior wall. We remove the source and treat the space with green, non-toxic methods so it doesn't keep re-contaminating everything you wash.

How to Get Mildew Smell Out of Clothes and Towels for Good

Mildew & Musty · By Odor Removal Experts · Updated June 2026 · Cleveland and Northeast Ohio

If you want to get mildew smell out of clothes and towels for good, the first thing to understand is what you're actually fighting. That sour, damp, locker-room smell isn't dirt. It's living mildew that took hold while the fabric stayed wet too long, and the byproducts it leaves behind soaked into the fibers. Mask it with fabric softener and it comes roaring back the next time the towel gets warm and humid. We see this constantly on jobs in Cleveland basements and Northeast Ohio apartments where laundry sat in the machine overnight or dried slow in a closed room.

Good news: most loads are fixable at home if you treat the cause and not the cover-up. Here's how we'd handle it.

The short answer

To get mildew smell out of clothes and towels, treat the cause instead of masking it. Skip fabric softener, run a hot wash with one to two cups of white vinegar and no detergent, then a second cycle with baking soda. For set-in loads, presoak in oxygen bleach or an enzyme additive, then dry completely on high heat before folding.

Mildew smell is living growth soaked into the fibers, not dirt.
Skip fabric softener; it traps odor and feeds future mildew.
Hot vinegar wash, then baking soda, then dry fully and fast.
If clean laundry keeps going musty, the washer or the room is the source.

Why mildew smell gets into clothes in the first place

Mildew needs three things: moisture, warmth, and time. Leave a wet load in the washer for a few hours, hang towels in a bathroom with no airflow, or stuff damp gym clothes in a bag, and you've handed it all three. The organisms feed on the fibers and the body oils, soap residue, and minerals trapped in them, then release the musty gas you smell.

The reason towels are the worst offenders is they're thick, they stay damp longer, and most people fold them and put them away before they're fully dry. They also collect detergent buildup over months, which holds moisture like a sponge. That's why the spot people miss is the towel that smells fine dry but reeks the second it gets wet in the shower.

How to get mildew smell out of clothes and towels (the steps that actually work)

This is the routine we hand customers when the fabric isn't ruined and the smell is fresh, not set in for years. Skip the fabric softener for all of it. Softener leaves a coating that traps the smell and feeds future mildew.

Run a hot wash you can stand. Check the care tag, but most cotton towels and everyday clothes handle hot water, and heat kills mildew far better than cold.
Add white vinegar, not detergent, on the first pass. Pour one to two cups of plain white vinegar into the drum and run a full hot cycle with no soap. Vinegar's acidity breaks down the musty residue and cuts detergent buildup.
Run a second cycle with baking soda. Half a cup to a cup in the drum with your normal detergent. Baking soda neutralizes odor instead of covering it.
For stubborn loads, use an enzyme or oxygen-based product. An oxygen bleach (the powdered kind) or an enzymatic laundry additive digests the organic gunk the smell clings to. Let it presoak in hot water for 30 to 60 minutes first.
Dry completely and fast. High heat in the dryer or full sun outdoors. Damp-dry is how the smell survives. Don't fold until bone dry.

When mildew smell on towels won't go away no matter what

Sometimes you do everything right and the towel still turns the second it's wet. A few honest reasons that happens, and what to do:

Your washer is the source. Front-loaders especially grow mildew in the rubber door gasket and detergent drawer. Wipe the gasket dry, leave the door open between loads, and run a hot empty cycle with vinegar or a washer-cleaning tablet monthly.
Hard-water mineral and detergent buildup. Years of residue can hold odor so deep that one wash won't reach it. A vinegar soak followed by an oxygen-bleach soak, repeated, sometimes brings it back. Sometimes it doesn't.
The fibers are just done. Cheap towels and synthetics that have been mildewed for a long time can be permanently colonized. If two or three full treatments don't fix it, the towel is worn out and it's cheaper to replace it than to keep fighting.

Musty laundry smell removal: a few real cautions

Chlorine bleach is hard on colors and elastic and it doesn't actually remove odor as well as oxygen bleach for this job, so reach for the oxygen version first.

Drying matters as much as washing. A perfect wash followed by slow air-drying in a humid bathroom will smell musty again by morning.

If the smell is coming back across multiple loads, the problem isn't the laundry. It's the room. Damp basements, leaky Northeast Ohio bathrooms, and closets against an exterior wall hold humidity that re-contaminates clean fabric. That's a bigger source issue than a wash cycle can solve.

Never mix vinegar and bleach

That combination releases chlorine gas. If you use both, run them in completely separate cycles, never together.

When it's bigger than the laundry, call a pro

Here's the line we draw. If it's a load or two and the fabric is decent, the steps above handle it. Where it stops being a laundry problem is when the musty smell is in the air of the room, in the closet, in the carpet, or coming back no matter how clean the clothes are.

That's our work. We find and remove the source first, then treat the space, not just the symptoms. Depending on the situation we use enzymatic and oxidizing treatments, thermal fogging to carry odor counteractants into the same pores the smell hid in, HEPA and activated-carbon air scrubbing to pull odor molecules out of the air, and hydroxyl generators that are safe to run while you're still living there. We seal surfaces where it's warranted. We never use ozone or chlorine gas and we never just mask the smell, because our methods are green and non-toxic and safe around kids, pets, and electronics. Most jobs are done in 1-4 hours, same or next day, and the work is backed by our 100% guarantee. Our techs are fully insured and discreet.

We serve Greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, and we handle everything from a single musty closet to a whole basement, a car, or a rental between tenants.