Bud says I am stubborn.  It’s true.  Once an idea occurs to me, I can’t get rid of it! Since the kids are long gone, I decided to treat myself to some white fluffy towels a couple of years ago. No problem since I would be totally in control.  These towels would never languish on the floor, under the bed, or touch mascara or muddy shoes.  They’d never wash a car or wipe spaghetti sauce off the sofa.  Time passed.  They got dingy.  I didn’t like them anymore.  I started sneaking into Bud’s bathroom to get his luscious green ones, but  I couldn’t get the white ones off my mind.  Surely, I could fix them. They couldn’t be bleached, so I tried non-chlorine bleach.  That didn’t brighten them at all, so I decided to bleach them, anyway.  What did I have to lose?

So I bleached them. They went from dingy gray to a dull hen poo poo muffledy dun.  Those towels were disgusting, sort of like they had been wiping shoes, smearing mascara, washing the car, and wiping up dog vomit with.  I tolerated them for a while, then checked the internet for a solution.  I needed to boil them in a solution of dishwasher detergent, vinegar, borax and detergent.  Sounded like a lot of trouble, but I really wanted them white again. I mixed the concoction right up and put my towels on to boil.  I boiled them for about thirty minutes, frequently punching them down.  I believe this was the high-tech method used up until folks got washing machines.  The water turned an ugly brown.  It must be working!

Eventually, I finished them up in the washer.  Meanwhile, I’d made a real mess of the kitchen.  The sink was full of pots, the stove a sloppy mess, and the floor tracked up.  It didn’t look like I’d done a deep cleaning just yesterday.  It only took an hour to get back to where it was.  My back still hurts.

In the picture on the right, you can see the result of all my hard work.  Aren’t those colors bizarre?  Some of the towels remained plain dingy gray.  Others took on an ugly, rusty hue.  The big surprise was, some turned a pale pink. I am partial to dingy gray, but that’s just me.  Does anybody out there need some ugly towels?  They’ll be perfect to  wash the car and wipe mud off the dog.

Wait!  I just saw two more things to try.  Laundry bluing is supposed to brighten dingy clothes up.  Sunshine bleaches!  Bud is going to have to put up a clothes line!