Washing stinky fleece bedding suggestions

[Annie Robbins]

Hey everyone!

I use fleece blankets as bedding in my pigs cage along with two potty’s and puppy pads that go underneath.

Lately I cannot get the musky smell out of the fleece beddings.

I’ve been washing with tide and borax odor eliminator. I have NOT been using frabic softener. But the smell won’t go away!

Any suggestions?

Btw: I have three females who are potty trained

 

[Seven7]

I soak all the fleece beddings and fleece pee pads in vinegar water to kill bacteria. But it also minimizes odor in my opinion. Mostly, I use vinegar to keep bacteria away.

 

[Sammi1]

I wash mine with vinegar & bicarbonate soda made into a paste then rinse in vinegar.

If there's any sun around, drying in the sun might help with smells.

 

[Annie Robbins]

After the vinegar wash, do you guys wash with regular detergent? Or just the vinegar wash?

 

[Posyrose]

After a recommendation on here, I use Halo liquid washing detergent which is designed to kill bacteria on sports gear - it works for me. You can add vinegar in the conditioner slot in the dispenser, but I haven't needed to.

 

[YvonneBlue]

I use the Dettol antibacterial laundry rinse and then do an extra rinse cycle to make sure it is washed out properly.

 

[Seven7]

After the vinegar wash, do you guys wash with regular detergent? Or just the vinegar wash?

No. Vinegar is safe to eat and safe to use around pets so I leave it. Before soaking the fleece beddings in vinegar, I hand wash with detergent and rinse several times until there is no more soap. After the fleece beddings are clean then I soak them in vinegar water, which I believe kills all the bacteria in their fleece liners.

Because my Finn and Lara use their hay pan as their bathrooms, there is minimum amount of pee and poo on their fleece liners and fleece pee pads. This makes it easy to hand wash their beddings and I don't necesarily feel that I have to do heavy duty wash in the washing machine. Although now that you mentioned this, I think I might take all their fleece items to do machine wash at the local laundry shop once in a while, but I would make sure there is not too much hay to clog up their machine of course.

Last trip to Costco, 5L bottles of vinegar. I do go through a lot.


Fleece liners being soaked and left for a bit. I use 50% vinegar and 50% water for soaking.

 

[PigglePuggle]

We use a Johnson's disinfectant product recommended for home washing of hospital type laundry, my mum had it recommended by her community nurses as she gets a lot of infections. Then a double rinse. Shifts the stinkiest stink and even removes boar secretions

 

[Swissgreys]

One of the problems with fleece can be a build up of detergent, becasue many of us follow the manufactures recommendation on amounts, and use far more than is really necessary in a modern washing machine.
Start by cleaning your washing machine. Put it in a 60 degree cycle with nothing in it, and do not add any detergent or softner. Have a look at the water - iis it full of bubbles (most are)? This means your machine had a detergent build up, so repeat this step (with an empty machine) until you don't see any more bubbles in the water while it is washing.
Then wash your fleece once in the clean machine, without any detergent to strip any excess.
If at all possible hang the fleece outside for an hour or two to air (it might not dry, but fresh air is important).

Hopefully this will solve the problem, and in future use about half the reccomended amount of detergent and a splash of vinegar in the rinse cycle.

 

[Annie Robbins]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions! I will be trying all of them this weekend. The good new is that I got a new wash machine today! yay!

 

[Kylie80]

I was finding vinegar still wasn’t getting the smell completely out but now I use a cap of one those anti bacterial washing products, it’s eucalyptus scent but when it’s dry you can’t smell the eucalyptus at all or the piggy smells. I wash in hot water, not sure of the temperature but it’s not effecting the fleece at all.

 

[Siikibam]

I put vinegar in the softener compartment and have recently started adding bicarb to the washing powder compartment. It doesn’t seem to smell when I do that. Then again they don’t seem to smell much.