In this modern age of rapidly evolving technology, we tend to trust that our household appliances do exactly what they're programmed to.
Why do the washing up manually when you can simply pop your grimy kitchen items in the dishwasher? And why spend ages washing your clothes by hand when there's a perfectly good washing machine that will do the job for you?
Well, if one particular experiment is anything to go by, perhaps you'll find that washing machines are not always as effective as you might think...
Jared Guynes, a YouTuber and Nerf champion, took to Facebook to share a cleaning hack which managed to remove a large amount of dirt from a supposedly clean towel.
"So my wife Ashley Guynes watched something online about “Towel Stripping” were you use a specific combination of household cleaning chemicals to do a deep clean of towels," he wrote.
He added: "In this case, she took our collection of clean towels, let me say that again, the towels were totally clean, washed and folded and in the linen closet, completely clean, completely normal."
Jared's wife then took the clean towels and put them in the bathtub to soak overnight in a mixture of Arm & Hammer baking soda, borax, and Oxi clean and hot water.
This is what became of the water the following day:
The Texas-based content creator then explained just how a towel fresh from the washing machine could still contain so much dirt.
"The story that she told me is that over the years of use microscopic amounts of soap and detergent get locked into the fibers of the towels," Jared said. "Subsequently, that stuff gets gummed up and can also trap a microscopic amount of dirt and grime, and bacteria, even after going through the washing machine with detergent."
He explained: "So after seeing someone else do it she decided to do with the experiment on our own towels here in the tub. I’m literally freaking out right now. The towels at your house, no matter how clean you think they are, are probably this nasty too."
The comments were a mixed bag, with some thankful to Jared for sharing the tip and others more skeptical.
For instance, one person shared: "Oh I’m trying this". While others suggested there was a more innocent explanation for the "dirt".
"That’s from the color in the towels," wrote one user while another agreed: "Looks like the dye from the brown towels but I’m no expert."
Legit hack or not - I'm off to throw out some old towels!
