Your laundry basket can be a real laundry challenge, because between mud-soaked kids’ clothes, sweaty sportswear, and dull fabrics, your detergent can have a tough time. However, instead of turning to bleach to avoid hassle and brighten your laundry, you can turn to natural and organic products to accomplish this mission. Reviving yellowed textiles, removing stains and dirt, and restoring luster to laundry is the natural “know-how” of eco-friendly natural products like baking soda, among others.

How to brighten laundry with baking soda?

For those who don’t want to risk using the bleaching power of bleach, baking soda is a great alternative due to its natural ability to lighten clothes. Although it’s more commonly thought of as a deodorizer, baking soda can make all the difference and improve the cleaning power of your detergent. As a result, this multi-purpose household powder is able to gently clean laundry while combating bad odors and stubborn stains. In addition, it helps keep the washing machine clean and is also a good substitute for fabric softener. To take advantage of it in this way, add half a cup of baking soda to your detergent and proceed with your usual washing. If you have a large load of laundry, add a cup of baking soda.

Other eco-friendly and natural ways to whiten laundry

Since it’s unlikely that your cupboards will only contain baking soda, it’s safe to say that you also have one of the following ingredients. That’s good, because they are excellent natural whiteners that are at the top of the basket of cleaning grandma’s tips.

  • Bleach laundry with lemon

Pour 1 to 2 cups of lemon juice into a bowl of hot water. Soak your white laundry in it and let it soak for 2 hours. Then proceed with machine washing. If you want to further guarantee its effectiveness, you can soak the cloth in boiling water and wait for the lemon to work overnight. The next day, all you have to do is let your white clothes dry in the sun.

  • Brighten laundry with white vinegar

White vinegar is very effective not only as a bleach, but also as an air freshener. It is ideal for fabrics that are prone to mildew.  To use it as a bleach, pour 1/4 cup into the fabric softener drawer during the last rinse cycle.

  • Bleach laundry with hydrogen peroxide

For laundry that’s whiter than white, you have another ingredient that acts as an excellent whitener while combating difficult stains:  Hydrogen Peroxide. Just pour a cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide into your detergent drawer, then run your normal wash cycle. Peroxide is also the ally of the resourceful, as it has several ingenious uses. Whiten laundry prone to stubborn stains with the combination of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide We think of yellow stains, grease stains or even oil stains and sweat marks. In this case, make a homogeneous mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda and then apply the resulting paste directly to the stains in question. Leave the mixture to act for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Remove excess product residue with a clean, used toothbrush before placing the garment in the washing machine.

  • Brighten laundry with a concentrated product

Dealing with particularly dirty white laundry that seems almost irretrievable? Never mind, because the above products can go very well together and work together for an even more uplifting result. To do this, prepare a large container in which you mix the following amounts: ½ cup sodium bicarbonate, 1 cup hydrogen peroxide, ¼ cup lemon juice and 6 cups of water. The less water, the more concentrated the solution. Choose your dose based on your needs. Soak your white clothes in the concentrated mixture for a few hours, then rinse them with plenty of water and put them in the washing machine.