A few years ago I was shopping for a new set of sheets. I couldn’t decide what to get, and ultimately decided to go with plain white. I figured they would go with whatever decor I had; and since all hotels use them, then they must be pretty easy to keep clean. 

I loved my white sheets for the first month. After that point, this love started to fade.

At that time, I noticed that they no longer where quite the lovely crisp white that I bought and seemed to be becoming more of an off-white or cream color. No matter how much bleach I added to the wash, the sheets would not return to their original white state. 

Obviously I was doing something wrong, if people always swear that white sheets are amazing, then why couldn’t I love them? I mean, yes I was terrible about removing my make-up every night, but I figured that all of that should come out in the wash. 

So one night as I was laying in bed contemplating a new color scheme for bedding I started researching how to properly care for white sheets and it turns out that all my bleaching was actually making it worse! This seemed so counter-intuitive, but the discoloration of the sheets was from body oils, make-up and sweat that when combined with the bleach would actually set further into the fabric. 

The articles I read mentioned a variety of products, some of which actually dye the sheets with a blue tint to make them appear whiter (this reminded me of a couple lip glosses I’ve bought in the past to make my teeth appear whiter). 

Since at this point I didn’t feel like I could make the sheets worse, I bought one of the products and decided to try it out. I ordered a container of OxyClean White Revive, did a load of sheets and Oh. My. Gosh. The sheets basically looked brand new.

I did use extra powder as directed for heavier soiled loads; but I didn’t have to do any sort of overnight soak (which is good, because despite having a utility sink plumbed in the laundry room, there isn’t an actual sink in there yet). 

With the amazing results from the first load, I’ve been washing the other sheet sets and duvet cover as well. The duvet cover we have has white up by the face and then some turquoise and dark blue at the feet. OxyClean White Revive is color safe, so it won’t have any issues fading the other parts of the cover. 

I seriously don’t know why it took me so long to research this product, and now that I’ve found it, I am back to loving my white bed sheets.

My plan for this upcoming weekend is to go through our dresser and closet to find any white tees that may need a bit of a refresh. I definitely feel like an adult when I’m actually excited about a laundry product!