How to REALLY whiten your whites

My husband has a great love for white BVD undershirts. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find this particular brand anymore, and my husband is hanging on to his supply for dear life. The result is a stack of dingy white undershirts that probably should have been replaced a while ago.

So to buy us some time to test out new brands and hopefully find something my husband will like, I decided I needed to try to revive the old stash of BVD shirts. The only problem? Nothing I did helped. Not bleach, hot water, lots of detergent.... nothing. You can see how dingy the shirts look in comparison with a white pillowcase below.

So I did some research and came up with a whitening formula that had to work. In fact, there was no way it COULDN'T work. Now normally I am not the type to put unnecessary chemicals into my washing machine, hence the reason I use an unscented, homemade laundry detergent. But all the natural methods I tried didn't help these shirts look any better.

So here's what I did:

First, I filled up the machine only to about half-way, where it was just covering the shirts with hot water. Then I added a big soup-pot full of boiling water from the stove to make sure the water was ultra hot.

Then I added:
-3 scoops of Norwex laundry detergent
-1 cup regular homemade laundry detergent (not pictured)
-1 scoop oxy-clean (not pictured)
-1 cup bleach
-1 cup Borax
-3 dishwashing soap pods (I would have used 1/2 cup regular dishwashing soap)

 Then I left the BVD shirts to soak in the washer in this concentrated, steaming solution for about 5 hours. I probably could have easily just left it in there overnight.

After 5 hours I turned the machine on and allowed it to run the cycle. Then I rewashed the shirts with hot water and some of my homemade detergent to get the whitening solution out of the shirts.

The result? I kept one shirt unwashed so you could see the difference.

MUCH better! I may have bought us another year, and I don't have to be embarrassed anymore when my husband wears these shirts to the gym. Before I could just feel people staring at him, thinking "Hasn't that man's wife ever heard of bleach?". Because in my neurotic mind that is EXACTLY what all people at the gym think about.