Stop Bleaching Your White Sheets — This All-Natural Trick Gets Them Whiter

The first sleep after freshly washed sheets is always my favorite. It makes me smile every time I get to slip between freshly laundered linens that are fitted, tight, and crisp across the mattress. We have white sheets — which I love in theory because they feel extra clean and are just so classic — but whenever I turn down the covers and wiggle the pillows out of their cases, it’s extremely clear how not snow-white our white sheets really are.

I decided to figure out how to whiten my white sheets, and in my research, I found one method that sounded way too easy to be true — but it worked incredibly well!

Yellowed sheets are most often caused by buildup of body oils, sweat, detergent, and skincare products; chlorine bleach can also cause white sheets to yellow. Of course, all colors of sheets can be discolored by what the weave absorbs due to regular use, but it’s most obvious in white sheets.

The only thing worse than confronting these stains when I take the sheets off to wash them is seeing that they’re still there when I make the bed after the sheets are washed. After plenty of online sleuthing and first-hand, I’m ecstatic to say I finally found an easy, chemical-free method to whiten white sheets that I’ve officially added to my cleaning arsenal.

Add about a half cup of baking soda to the drum of the washing machine and then fill the fabric softener dispenser with distilled white vinegar. The specificity in the placements is important to note: Allowing vinegar and baking soda to mix in the process will render each of them no more useful than salt water.

Splitting them up, on the other hand, allows them each to work their magic without interference since the vinegar gets released later in the cycle through the fabric softener dosing cup.

After my first load, I could hardly believe how much whiter and, incidentally, softer our sheets were. My husband even noticed — and that means there was a truly noticeable difference!

I’m so happy to know how simple, effective, safe, and effortless it is to whiten our sheets every time they go in the wash now. I’m hooked on this method, and I’ll be doing it excitedly every single time the sheets go in the laundry (which should be about once a week, by the way).