How to Wash Thrifted Clothes (and Get the Ukay Smell Out for Good)

Everyone who has thrifted in the Philippines knows the smell. It isn’t dirt, exactly. It’s the bale. A few hundred garments pressed into a sack, shipped across an ocean, stored in a hot warehouse, and opened on a table in Carbon. It’s also completely fixable, with the right method. Here it is, written for the climate you’re actually washing in.

This covers everything you might bring home from an ukay stall or a sorted shop. Cottons and synthetics, denim, delicates, leather, shoes, bags. If you want help deciding what to bring home in the first place, our ten-point quality check comes first. If you need to know where to go, start with the best thrift stores in Cebu.

What the ukay smell actually is

Understanding it is most of the cure, because the smell is three different things and detergent on its own only handles one of them.

• Mildew and mould. Bales get pressed damp and stored in humid ports and warehouses. Mould spores lodge in the fibres and give off the musty note. Mildew is alkaline and breaks down with a mild acid. That’s the vinegar.
• Body and product odours. Sweat residue, old deodorant, perfume, smoke from the previous owner, concentrated by compression. Many of these compounds are acidic and get neutralised by an alkali. That’s the baking soda.
• Storage and shipping chemicals. Some exporters fumigate bales against pests, and warehouses use mothballs and deodorising sprays. These sit on the surface of the fibres and lift with a long soak and fresh air.

So the method below has three stages, acid then alkali then sun. And fabric softener, which coats fibres with a scented film, is the enemy until the smell has gone. It seals the problem in.

Before you wash

1. Keep thrift in its own bag until wash day. Don’t put it in the wardrobe or on the bed. If anything is living in a seam, you want it in a plastic bag and not your pillow. A day in a sealed bag in the sun is a good start.
2. Check the pockets, seams and hems. Coins, receipts, hair pins, the odd yen. Also check for what you missed at the stall. A hidden stain, a moth hole, a loose button that will come off in the wash and vanish.
3. Sort three ways. By colour (darks, lights, reds). By fabric (cottons and synthetics together, denim alone, delicates alone). By smell, so anything that reeks gets its own soak.
4. Read the care label, then use judgement. “Dry clean only” on a polyester blouse is a manufacturer being careful. Hand wash it cold. The same label on silk, wool, leather or anything structured means it.

The standard method

This is the routine for nine out of ten pieces: cottons, synthetics, denim.

1. Soak: cool water and one cup of white vinegar, 30 to 60 minutes. A basin, a balde, a bathtub. Enough water to cover, about 250ml of plain white vinegar per basin. Push the clothes under and leave them. For a heavy smell, leave them two hours or overnight. The vinegar smell itself washes out completely in the next step.
2. Wash: warmest safe cycle, normal detergent, half a cup of baking soda. Drain the soak, then wash as usual with your detergent and half a cup of baking soda tipped straight into the drum. The soda neutralises what the vinegar didn’t and softens hard water, which most of Cebu has. Use the warmest temperature the label allows. 40°C is a good default for cottons and does most of the disinfecting.
3. Dry: in the sun, inside out. Direct sunlight is the final disinfectant and the best deodoriser there is. Ultraviolet kills what survived the machine. Inside out protects the colours and puts the sweaty side, underarms and collars, in the light. Four hours is enough. In rainy season, see the drying section below.
4. Smell test before it goes in the wardrobe. Nose in the underarm. If there’s any trace of the bale, repeat from step one. One repeat clears almost everything.

When the smell won’t go

Some pieces hang on, usually synthetics and heavy jackets. Work up this list:

1. Three loads. A method several laundry specialists recommend for vintage. First cycle with one cup of vinegar and no detergent. Second cycle with half a cup of baking soda and no detergent. Third cycle with an enzyme detergent (one that lists protease or “bio” enzymes, which most Philippine liquid detergents do). Then sun.
2. Overnight baking soda dry-pack. For anything you can’t soak again, put it in a bag or box with an open box of baking soda for three days, then air it in shade and sun.
3. Activated charcoal. Same idea, stronger. A few charcoal sachets (the kind sold for wardrobes) in a sealed bag for a week.
4. Steam. A garment steamer, or a steam iron held just off the fabric on the highest safe setting, lifts odour and kills mites. Good for jackets and anything structured.
5. Vodka spray. Cheap vodka in a spray bottle, misted on and left to evaporate. It’s the theatre-wardrobe trick for costumes that can’t be washed, and it works.

Delicates

Silk, wool, rayon, lace. These are the pieces most worth thrifting (a silk blouse for ₱150 is the best value in the whole trade) and the easiest to ruin.

• Hand wash, cold, briefly. Basin of cold water, a small amount of gentle detergent or baby shampoo, and a tablespoon of vinegar. Swish for two or three minutes. Don’t soak silk or wool for an hour.
• Never wring. Press the water out against the side of the basin, then roll in a dry towel and press again.
• Dry flat or on a padded hanger, in shade. Sun fades silk and can felt wool. Rayon (viscose) stretches when wet, so dry it flat.
• Wool and knits: a cold vinegar rinse, then flat. Reshape while damp. If it smells of mothballs, a week in a sealed bag with baking soda before you wash it.
• Beaded, sequinned or lined pieces: spot clean, air in shade, or pay a dry cleaner. Cebu has several, and many offer a “deodorising” or “sanitising” option for around ₱200 to ₱400 a piece.

Denim and heavy cotton

Thrifted denim is often the best denim you’ll own, and it can take a proper wash. Vinegar soak, then a warm wash inside out with detergent and baking soda, then sun inside out to protect the colour. For raw or very dark denim, keep everything cold and skip the sun on the outside face. Denim dries slowly in humidity, so hang it by the waistband, legs open, and give it a full day. A jacket with a heavy bale smell may need the three-load method. The lining is usually the culprit.

Leather and suede

Water is the enemy. Never soak, never machine wash, never dry in the sun.

• Leather outside: wipe with a barely damp cloth and a drop of mild soap, then dry with a clean cloth. Condition with leather conditioner or, in a pinch, a little coconut oil worked in and buffed off. Most Filipino households have it and it works.
• Lining: turn it out. Mist lightly with a 1:1 water and vinegar spray, or lay a cloth dampened with the mix inside. Hang in shade with airflow, or bag it with open baking soda for several days.
• Suede: dry brushing only, with a suede brush or a clean toothbrush. Baking soda dry-pack for smell. A suede eraser for marks.
• Mould spots on leather: wipe with a cloth dampened in 1:1 vinegar and water, dry at once, condition. If it’s inside the lining and widespread, a dry cleaner that takes leather.

Shoes and sneakers

1. Take out the laces and insoles. Laces go in a mesh bag in the machine.
2. Insoles: hand wash with soap and a brush, dry in shade, sprinkle with baking soda. Or replace them. New insoles are ₱100 to ₱200 and the single best hygiene upgrade for thrifted shoes.
3. Brush dry dirt off soles and uppers with an old toothbrush.
4. Clean the uppers. Canvas and mesh with a paste of baking soda and water, or a little detergent. Leather with mild soap on a damp cloth. Suede with a dry brush.
5. Wipe the inside with a cloth dampened in 1:1 water and vinegar.
6. Stuff with newspaper and dry in shade. Sun and heat crack leather and soften the glue that holds soles on.
7. Overnight, a tablespoon of baking soda in each shoe. Tip it out in the morning.

Don’t machine wash shoes unless they’re plain canvas and you accept that the glue may give. Swabe Hitz in Basak Pardo and the Carbon shoe rows (see our ukay guide) are where you’ll be bringing these home from, and the sneaker resellers there mostly follow this exact routine.

Bags

Empty every pocket and turn the lining out if it will come. Vacuum or brush the inside. Canvas and nylon bags can be hand washed cold with mild detergent and a splash of vinegar, then dried in shade stuffed with towels to hold the shape. Leather and structured bags: wipe, condition, and a baking soda dry-pack inside for a week if they smell. Hardware polishes up with a little toothpaste on a cloth.

Stains you will meet

Test any spot treatment on an inside seam first. Never mix vinegar with bleach.

Drying in a humid climate

The sun is your best tool, and in Cebu it’s free most of the year. The complication is the rain, and the fact that a garment left damp for two days in 80 percent humidity will grow exactly the mildew you were trying to remove.

• Dry season (roughly December to May): wash in the morning, on the line by 9am, in by 2pm. Done.
• Rainy season (June to November): wash early and watch the sky. If the afternoon storm is coming, bring things in at the first cloud and finish indoors in front of a fan. Airflow matters more than heat. Never leave a load on the line overnight.
• Indoors: hang with space between garments, in front of a fan or an open window. An aircon on dry mode speeds it up. Anything still damp after 24 hours goes back in the machine on a rinse and spin.
• Dryers: laundromat dryers are the fastest fix in rainy season and the heat helps with disinfecting. Check the label. Synthetics and anything with elastic go on low.

Using a laundromat

Cebu’s self-service and drop-off laundromats charge somewhere around ₱150 to ₱250 for a wash-and-dry load and won’t blink at a bag of thrift. Bring your own vinegar and baking soda. Most machines have a pre-wash or soak option, or do the vinegar soak at home and carry the wet load in. Ask for the hot wash and the high dryer setting for cottons, and tell them it’s thrift. Many will add an extra rinse. Some drop-off shops offer a “sanitise” or “deodorise” add-on for a few pesos more, worth it for a big bale haul.

The ₱300 thrift-care kit

• White vinegar, 1 litre (₱40 to ₱60)
• Baking soda, 500g (₱60 to ₱90, from the baking aisle, not the tiny box)
• Hydrogen peroxide 3%, 120ml (₱30)
• An old toothbrush and a soft clothes brush (₱50)
• Mesh laundry bag for laces and delicates (₱40)
• A spray bottle (₱40) for the 1:1 vinegar-water mix
• Optional: a garment steamer, if you thrift jackets often (from ₱800)

With that lot, everything from a ₱25 Carbon tee to a ₱1,500 jacket from Raintree comes out clean and odourless, and the smell that puts so many people off second-hand becomes a thing you did once, in a basin, on a Sunday morning. Clothes that come from Dara sellers have usually been through their owner’s wardrobe and washing machine rather than a bale, which is one of the quieter reasons preloved is easier than ukay. The vinegar soak is still a good habit. Do it anyway.