Cleaning shop towels

[Fins/413]

How do you  folks clean your shop towels? I usually send them through the washer, it does OK but I' m not crazy about that. I'd like to soak them in a degreaser before the washer and am seeking recommendations.  Any other ideas other than trashing them.

[J.A.F.E.]

If they're just dirty they get washed but the load is just the rags and maybe my work clothes. If they're really bad they get tossed. The swaps offer shop rags pretty cheap so I just pick the grubbiest looking ones to sacrifice and don't worry about it.

If I had room for another washer I'd clean them but I don't so I don't.

[bmwrd0]

I do the same as JAFE, only hoping the wife doesn't notice...

[DeadNutz]

A BIL thought that was a good way to save money by washing the shop towels. It screwed up some of my sister's clothes and plugged up the plumbing. I still have hundreds of shop towels left from the shop, have a full 33 gal trash can of them from the shop I bought and recycle old clothes as rags. I like the old clothes for jobs where I know the rags will get tossed.

[goodfellow]

We have a separate washer in the basement for dirty blankets, dog beds, and oily work clothes. I run dirty but good condition rags through the washer with a mix of detergent and OxyClean. I can usually get the rags pretty clean and get two, maybe three use cycles out of them before they get tossed altogether

[bonneyman]

I use old T-shirts for rags. I always have some that can no longer be worn, so they become "new" rags. About once a month I wash in a separate load after the weeks laundry is done, then clean the washing machine. Really bad rags get tossed.

If I'm really low on them I go to one of the thrift stores and ask if they sell clothes by the pound. Get a bag of old T-shirts for $10.

[fatfillup]

I used to have an old wash machine at the shop for washing rags but it just wasn't worth it.  I buy used cleaned shop rags cheap and when they get hogged up, they get trashed.  We really don't go through that many.

[pep]

Fins

I think not sure, but cleaning shop towels was the reason for the laundromat or coin wash .

Pep

[slip knot]

The uniform guy comes by once a week at work. $10 with my bag of old ones gets me a bag of clean ones. last me about 90 days or so.

[bonneyman]

The uniform guy comes by once a week at work. $10 with my bag of old ones gets me a bag of clean ones. last me about 90 days or so.

I wonder if they do home delivery?

[muddy]

Wash them with work clothes until they don't come clean or aren't useful as a rag.

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[ken w.]

I wash my greasy work cloths and a few rags in a mix of Dawn dish soap / Awesome degreaser and a Tide Pod laundry soap and the come out really clean. I do an extra rinse too.

[lauver]

Gang,

I pre-soak shop rags, towels, & work clothes in the kitchen sink using HOT water and TSP.  Then run them true the home washing machine (again with hot water and TSP).  Then run thru the dryer as normal.  They usually come out nice and clean.  My dogs love to lay in the warm shop stuff while I'm folding them.

A note about my procedures... I don't use my shop rags & towels for really greasy or oil saturated work (like lubing the front spindles or wiping up big oil spills.  I use paper towels with a degreaser to get all the old grease out, then do a final wipe with the shop towels.  This makes the washing job easier and prevents contaminating the washing machine with horrifically greasy shop rags.  It seems to work for me and my family.

[goodfellow]

A good way to wipe up and catch really greasy and oil stuff is to use cheap pet-store puppy pads. I use them all the time to soak up spills, as a work mat when disassembling messy components or mixing paint.

[Uncle Buck]

I gave up on trying to DIY my red shop towels (the commercial type) some years ago. When Western Auto went out of business years ago they sold bags of red shop rags dirt cheap. I bought 300 red shop rags. I use them for years between dealing with them.

The first time I took them to  commercial laundry and loaded something like 7-8 machines full of rags late at night when no one was around and washed and dried them there. I felt guilty about doing that for anyone else that followed so I never again did that. My rags are so nasty that I would never try washing them at home.

The next thing I tried was approaching the commercial uniform companies about exchanging them. That was really bad, I only tried that once, the jerks gave me really trashy rags in exchange for my dirty, but decent rags. I do not suggest approaching commercial uniform companies on your own like I did unless you want to risk being screwed over.

About six months ago I was running out of laundered rags and needed to deal with it again so I tried a new approach. This time I spoke to the route guy that serviced my employer. This was the best deal of all for me. I was able to exchange one bag of 50 rags a week with the route guy at no cost to me. The guy just took my bag and gave me a cleaned bag back the same as what he was supplying my employer. Needless to say with 300 to exchange I stayed with this in a dedicated way exchange all 300 of them. I will admit I really lucked out getting them all exchanged at no cost to me. This only works if you have the red shop rags that uniform service companies use. Success may vary with this approach.

With 300 clean ones sitting on the shelf it will now be a few years before I need to worry about this again.