How to Get Mold Out of Clothes: Vinegar, Oxygen Bleach, Borax, and When to Give Up (2026)

Why Clothes Grow Mold

Fabric is cellulose (cotton, linen, rayon) or protein (wool, silk) plus body oils and detergent residue — food — and mold needs only moisture and a few days. Clothes left wet in the washer over a weekend, a gym bag forgotten in the car, a closet against a cold exterior wall, a basement wardrobe, a suitcase after a humid trip: every case is the same equation. The good news is that most washable clothes recover completely; the bad news is that the two things people do first — the dryer and indoor brushing — make it worse.

First, Two Things Not to Do

• Don't put moldy clothes in the dryer. Heat sets mold staining into the fibres. Wash first; dry only when the stain and smell are gone.
• Don't brush them off indoors. Dry mold on fabric is a cloud of spores. Take the clothes outside.

The Method

1. 1Outside, brush loose growth off with a stiff brush. Bag anything you are discarding.
2. 2Presoak for an hour — overnight for heavy growth — in a bucket of the hottest water the care label allows, with one of:

• one cup of white vinegar — colour-safe, kills much of the growth, lifts the musty smell; what vinegar does and doesn't do applies here too
• a scoop of oxygen bleach (sodium percarbonate — the OxiClean type) — colour-safe, the best stain lifter of the three
• half a cup of borax — the old-fashioned option, effective and cheap

1. 1Wash hot — the hottest setting the label permits — with normal detergent and a cup of vinegar in the rinse compartment. Whites only: a chlorine-bleach wash instead of vinegar, never with it.
2. 2Sun-dry. Ultraviolet finishes what the wash started and takes the smell out. Check the item before it ever sees the dryer.
3. 3Repeat once if a stain lightened but remains. A stain that survives two rounds is permanent: the fabric is clean, just marked.

Delicates that cannot take a hot wash — wool, silk, structured garments — go to the dry cleaner; tell them it is mold so they treat it rather than press it.

The Special Cases People Actually Search

Clothes left in the washer. A day or two wet in a closed drum grows the mildew that causes the sour smell, but it has not had time to stain. One hot cycle with a cup of vinegar and no detergent, then a normal wash, then a full dry, fixes it. If the smell survives that, it is in the machine, not the clothes — the gasket and the drain filter — and it will keep re-seeding every load until the machine is cleaned and the door is left open between washes.

Clothes that were already washed and dried. The dryer set the stain. Overnight oxygen-bleach or borax soak, hot vinegar wash, sun. It works often enough to be worth one attempt; it does not always work.

Mildew smell that survives washing. Vinegar wash without detergent, then a normal wash; sun-dry. If everything you wash comes out musty, the machine is the source.

Storage mold — clothes from a damp closet, basement or suitcase, covered in white or grey powder. The method is the same, but check the closet: mold on clothes on an exterior-wall closet means condensation on that wall, and the window-sill and cold-wall problem is the real fix. Cedar, silica packs and a small closet dehumidifier keep stored clothes dry.

Shoes, bags, tents, canvas. Brush outdoors, scrub with vinegar-water or a mild detergent, rinse, dry completely in the sun. Leather is different — its own guide.

When to Give Up

Heavily colonised fabric — growth through the weave, a mattress or upholstery soaked through, anything that smells musty after two proper washes — is discarded. EPA's guidance on porous materials applies: what the mold has grown *into* is not reliably cleaned. The exception worth trying is sentimental items, where a dry cleaner or a textile conservator may do better than the washing machine.

Health, Briefly

Handling moldy clothes is an exposure — spores in the face while brushing or loading. Anyone with a mold allergy or asthma should hand that job to someone else, and nobody should wear an item that still smells musty. Mold allergy symptoms are worth reading if laundry day reliably starts the sneezing.

Bottom Line

Brush outdoors, presoak in vinegar, oxygen bleach or borax, wash as hot as the label allows, dry in the sun, and only then the dryer. Fix the washer if the washer was the cause, and the closet if the closet was. Most moldy clothes come back; the ones that don't are the ones that went through the dryer first.