How to Remove Underarm Body Odor From Clothes

First, consider your overall cleaning habits. Be sure you are washing in warm or hot water whenever possible, the hotter the water, the better the cleaning. Use care labels to guide you in your temperature choice. Also, be sure you are using the proper amount of detergent, underusing laundry products can also drop cleaning performance, especially for people with hard water.

Next, consider pretreating the armpit area of your tops before you wash them, even if there are no obvious stains. This will prevent odors and stains from building up over time. Depending on the top, here are some good pretreating techniques.

1. For white bleachable items, you can pretreat the armpit area with a bleach and water solution made with ¼ cup Clorox^® Disinfecting Bleach added to ¾ cup water. Apply the bleach and water solution to the stains and then immediately machine wash the item using detergent and ⅓ cup Clorox^® Disinfecting Bleach.
2. For colored items or white non-bleachable items, apply a little Clorox 2^® For Colors 3-in-1 Liquid directly to the armpit area, rub it in, and allow it to sit for up to 10 minutes before machine washing with detergent and more Clorox 2^® in the hottest water possible.

Since polyester is an oil-loving fiber that may be holding onto body oil in your sweat, it’s harder to remove the odor. Try directly pretreating with Clorox 2^® For Colors 3-in-1 Liquid.

For any stained white shirts with a lot of build-up that you may still have, you can try restoring them using a recommendation often provided in clothes washer user’s guides:

1. Working in a dishpan, pour boiling water slowly through each armpit stain. This is to “melt” any build-up (a combination of deodorant, sweat, body soil, bacteria, etc.) It will help if you position the shirt in the dishpan before you start so that you can get to each stain without touching the shirt since once you begin, it will be boiling hot!
2. Don’t rinse the shirt—just pour off as much of the hot water as you can. This keeps the build-up in a more “melted” state. And if you do need to handle the shirt either use kitchen tongs or wear gloves.
3. Apply a mixture of 1:1:1 parts baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and water directly to the stain. Sometimes this is referred to as a paste, but it is actually quite watery, so be sure to mix up enough so you can saturate the stains.
4. Rinse the shirt, and then follow up with a hot water wash with a good enzyme-containing detergent and ⅓ cup Clorox^® Disinfecting Bleach.