For anyone who runs or exercises regularly, or indeed lives with someone who wears football tops regularly, tell me you can’t smell this picture…
For some unknown reason, I have always much preferred to wear cotton when exercising. To the horror of many others. I know it’s unpractical and it gets hot and heavy when you sweat, but it’s what I like and there’s no changing me now. Dave, however, is more of a fully developed adult than me and wears proper sports gear when he’s running. Which is all fine and dandy, other than after a while, it absolutely bloody honks!
Here’s the thing though, science fans, fresh sweat doesn’t smell, it’s stale sweat that reeks, and despite us always only wearing our sweaty gear once before washing, over time there was a build up, particularly in Dave’s stuff, and I was completely unable to get the sweaty stench out of his older running tops.
I’ll admit I was lazy with washing and in the past and only washed our sports stuff in with the regular dark wash, but that wasn’t cutting it. Funnily enough I was watching and old episode of Newlyweds, where Nick told Jessica that his sports stuff needed to be washed separately with special sports wash and on a higher heat (not quite 98 degrees though – hahahahahahahah) that the penny dropped my system was failing. Never let it be said that show wasn’t educational.
Quite coincidentally, Asda started target advertising to me that Ariel had just released their own Active Wash, specifically for sports clothes (that will have been our Alexa listening in on my thoughts). So I decided to give it a go. In terms of fabric softener, we tried some Ecozone Laundry Liquid Sports Wash from Amazon, which, if it worked, would be worth the £7.67 price tag. Sadly though it didn’t seem to do much good and it smelt awful so we switched to Halo Sports Laundry Liquid which you can get (or get your parents to get) from Sainsbury for a more more purse friendly £4.50.
Combine both those products along with actually washing them on the ‘sports wash’ setting on our washing machine, I’ve noticed a massive difference in Dave’s tops particularly. I’ll be honest I think some of them were too far gone to be rescued but at least now I don’t think they’re getting any worse. And I think if you can some brand new sports wear, and always only washed them in speciality detergent, I reckon they’ll last a hell of a lot longer.
This isn’t in any way a sponsored post (I wish), I’m merely trying to pass on some wisdom that anyone with more than two conflicting brain cells like me probably already knows, but it was quite a revelation for me to actually treat our sports wear with a bit more care. The fact it was inspired by Nick Lachey, who was in a very mediocre boyband in the 90s just makes me find the whole story even funnier!
If you have any special washing tips or routines for treating your sports stuff please let me know. I’d be really interested to see what other people do!
