How to Get Smell out of Clothes, An Easy Green Laundry Hack

Last Updated on January 3, 2023

Wondering how to get smell out of clothes you picked up at the thrift store? An easy-to-use laundry booster can take all sorts of chemicals out of your new and used clothing!

Thanks to EnviroKlenz for sponsoring this post and giving those of us who want to avoid chemicals an effective tool to get smell out of clothes!

How to get smell out of clothes???

I know you’ve been there, my fellow frugal-minded and green-living friends.

You’re facing a pile of exciting new hand-me-downs or thrift store finds, and you throw them in the washing machine hopefully, fingers crossed that the odor of chemical detergent or perfume will come out in the wash.

You hang them on the line, and the smell of “fresh scent” from someone else’s chemical-filled laundry detergent or dryer sheets fills the laundry room.

Back they go in the wash. Rinse, repeat.

Rinse, repeat. Rinse, rinse, repeat.

Four loads of laundry later, they’re still stinky.

So you Google ‘how to remove smell from secondhand clothes’ and try the various methods, soaking the offending garments in baking soda, washing with vinegar, rinsing over and over and over again. Eventually, some pieces are passable, though a sensitive nose may still detect a faint odor of the thrift store or some perfume more powerful than your heroic laundry efforts.

And then there are the ones that simply refuse to give up the scent of dryer sheets or the potent perfume their last owner doused herself in. Ever green-minded, you just keep throwing them in with your next load of laundry.

And ever-repulsed by chemical smell, you never do get to wear some otherwise fabulous ‘nearly new’ duds.

How to Get Smell Out of Clothes the Easy Way!

I’ll be honest, I’m generally too strapped for time to mess with baking soda soaks and the like. But if there was an easy way to get rid of chemical smells? Sign me up!

Imagine my excitement when a product called EnviroKlenz Laundry Booster caught my attention. It promised to pull those stinky chemicals out of my secondhand clothes!

The ingredient list looked great: Just magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, and titanium dioxide, non-toxic mineral powders I’m totally comfortable putting my clothes in. EnviroKlenz was developed especially for people with multiple chemical sensitivities to remove those persistent chemical compounds that lurk basically everywhere these days.

More importantly, it had the stamp of approval from Debra Lynn Dadd, the super-maven of non toxic living. Debra does some serious research and gives only a small fraction of products a thumbs up, and Enviroklenz had it.

I needed to give this stuff a try! I loaded up my latest rummage-sale scores, some of which smelled pretty perfume-y, as well as a few hand-me-downs that had spent too long in someone else’s storage and had a musty odor. I had an additional pile I’d already washed once that didn’t pass the smell test and were awaiting a re-wash.

I crossed my fingers and put Enviroklenz to the test. Would it get smells out of clothes when other methods had failed?

Removing Chemical Smell with Enviroklenz

EnviroKlenz laundry booster comes in a big bottle, enough for 15 large loads of laundry. It looks a lot like milk of magnesia (which some of you green readers might have discovered makes a great DIY deodorant), which only makes sense since they’re both magnesium hydroxide.

You give the bottle a good shake and pour in a 1/2 cup with your detergent and wash it in warm water with a second rinse. (This is the detergent I’m using now that I know about all the greenwash going on with “natural” laundry products.)

The minerals attach themselves to the offending compounds — body odor, smoke, mildew, or a number of chemicals found in cleaning products and perfumes — and away they go with the rinse water. See ya, stink!

I sniffed everything as it came out and hung it on the line. Most of it smelled exactly as it should — like nothing! No ‘fresh scent’ or whatever Big Chemical has duped so many millions of people into thinking clean is supposed to smell like. Hooray!

EnvironKlenz’s motto is “Clean has no odor.” They’re not just covering up one chemical smell with another.

A few things continued to hold odor, so I contacted the company, who confirmed my suspicions that of the thousands of chemicals used in fragrance, some might have interacted with synthetic fibers and may never come out.

Just for the heck of it, I ran it all through again with vinegar, and they continued to stubbornly hang onto the smell. Sometime when I have more energy to invest, maybe I’ll try dousing them in vodka and dunking them in baking soda for days before I donate them and let someone else decide if they want to try to get the smell out of these clothes or haven’t realized that chemical scent is bad news.

But all those other second-hand goodies? I’ll be putting EnviroKlenz in the first time through the wash and enjoy their chemical-free state a lot sooner!

How to Get Smell Out of Clothes with EnviroKlenz

What EnviroKlenz removes: 

• body odors
• chemical pesticides and lawn care chemicals
• fuel odors
• tobacco smell
• mildew

(If you’ve tried vinegar and baking soda, you’ve probably found that vinegar does nada for some body odors, and baking soda is useless against lawn chemicals and fuel. EnviroKlenz deals with all of these.)

EnviroKlenz comes with a money-back guarantee, so there’s no reason not to give it a ‘whirl’ in your next load of secondhand laundry.

EnviroKlenz can also take chemicals out of new clothing

Or freshening up your favorite gym shirt or de-stinking a jacket that absorbed smell from someone else’s cigarettes.

*However,* if something smells really powerful at the thrift shop, you may want to take a pass on it. Synthetic fabrics are more likely to hang onto stink, so give that perfume-y polyester t-shirt some careful thought before you buy it.

I recommend giving anything you’re trying to get smell out of a good pre-soak in vinegar and running it through the wash with a good plant-based laundry detergent and some extra rinses. If there’s still smell left, then try Enviroklenz, which can deal with some things vinegar can’t.

**NOTE: Vinegar should not be put in the same wash as Enviroklenz, as it will make the laundry booster ineffective.**

Do you have some “nearly-new” clothes you want to get smell out of? Find out how to get smell out of clothes the easy way and give EnviroKlenz a try!

You can buy EnviroKlenz here. Save 15% with the code savvy15. 

EnviroKlenz makes other chemical-elimination products as well, including an air filter and carpet cleaner that can help make your home healthier and safer.

Pin to save this info on how to get smells out of clothes for later!

How to get smell out of clothes photo credits: wilhei,PDPics, stocksnap

Disclosure: I received compensation and a complimentary bottle of EnviroKlenz in exchange for my honest review. I only promote products I believe in and am comfortable using on my own family. All opinions strictly my own.