subject: A Tough Act For Clothing Mildew [print this page] What is mildew? Mildew is actually a mold, which is practically a living organism that survives and lives in a fairly controlled environment with adequate warmth and humidity. When your clothes got mildew, the best action to take would be to clean it up and remove the mold right away otherwise it will definitely stain your clothes for quite some time or even for as long as the clothes are there. If the mold stays longer on the textile, it will take longer to remove them off and the worst that could happen is it could make your clothes not wearable.
The first step that you should take is to get the clothes affected by mildew outside of your home. Preferably some place where you can bleach, brush and wash freely. This is manual cleaning. There are no washing machines designed to take off any mildew on clothing. You need to do it outside for safety purposes. You need to brush off, bleach off and wash away the mold growth on your clothes. You do not want any free spores on the atmosphere inside your home. It may infect your kids or even you especially if one of your family members is immune-compromised. These free spores may become opportunistic and will invade the integrity of your system.
After you have brushed, bleached and washed off the molds from the clothes, the next thing you should do is to leave the textile under the heat of the sun and let it dry out. The extreme heat of the sun will totally kill off the mildew. As you well may know, molds always thrive on moist, damp and fairly warm environment but they cannot survive drought. They need to have the level of humidity to sustain their needs.
When it has dried out, there will still be remnants of stains. Soak the clothing mildew remnants into cold water for about five minutes and then wash the clothes into a hot water with bleached detergent powder. Dry it again under the sun.
There are stains that are really stubborn which could even cause nasty washing machine smells. Therefore, to get rid of the stubborn stains, brush or sponge the affected area with a diluted chlorine solution that consists of two tablespoon of bleach with one quart of water. After 10 to 15 minutes of scrubbing, rinse the clothing.
This process will definitely make you get rid of the clothes mildew then do the laundry in the usual way, rinse and let it dry.
