I was sent Vapor Fresh laundry detergent free to try out. Vapor Fresh is a high-performance laundry detergent suitable for gym clothes. This post contains affiliate links, thanks for supporting the site.

When I did a race on New Year’s Eve, I was standing in line for packet pickup and noticed the person in front of me kind of smelled bad. I’m sure you’ve experienced this… you have workout gear that has been laundered and yet it still stinks. It’s a pretty common thing, smells tend to get trapped in the fibers of our workout gear. Microbial bugs really like our polyester fabrics, there are studies to prove it.

I’ve had some workout clothes that I can’t seem to get smelling clean again, a few have just made their way to the trash because I couldn’t take it anymore. A post here on my site about a big brand sports detergent still is one of my more trafficked posts and occasionally people chime in with comments about how strongly that stuff smells. That’s a huge deterrent in my book, I don’t want to replace one smell with another.

I recently tried Vapor Fresh and the weirdest, yet probably best, thing about it was the complete absence of smell after washing. No perfumes or a scent that seems to be found in “fragrance-free” items. It just smelled like… clothes. And not stinky clothes, just clothes.

Since I have an HE washer, you only need a half scoop of detergent. My clothes seem to be clean, I don’t have a microscope to check super close to see if there are still any germys in there, but my nose doesn’t detect any issues!

Vapor Fresh is hypoallergenic and shouldn’t irritate anyone’s skin. It’s formulated with environmentally-friendly biodegradable surfectants and contains absolutely no fragrances at all. One 5-lb canister can wash 36 regular loads of laundry or 72 high-efficiency (HE) loads, or $.47 per load/$.23 per HE load.

You can buy it via Amazon or the Vapor Fresh website.

They even offer a blog post full of tips about how to launder workout apparel. It’s got some great tips, but one that I always live by is to not use fabric softeners. They can leave a residue behind which makes the fabric not wick as well and allow odor-causing bacteria to remain behind. Did you ever notice that infant/kid pajamas always say to not use fabric softener? It messes with the flame-retardant capabilities.

I’ve never used dryer sheets before getting married, but my husband is slightly addicted to them. I think they mess with your clothes and when you start using them it seems you can never stop! Thus, I have a separate laundry bag for my workout clothes and my husband isn’t allowed to touch it, I don’t want him to mess them up with dryer sheets.

While Vapor Fresh is formulated for “performance” apparel, it can also be used on all clothes. So you wouldn’t have to separate your fitness clothes from the rest of your laundry, unless you wanted to. Or you have a spouse that will potentially ruin things with dryer sheets… then I highly recommend separating your laundry.

Speaking of separating laundry, I’m going to leave you with this tip… if you have the space get 1 or 2 laundry carts with separate bags. Designate each bag for a specific load. I have two of these in my closet, so there is a bag for darks, grays/tans, whites, reds, blue/greens, and my workout gear. Then when I have to do laundry I just grab one of these bags and haul it to the washer. No wasted time sorting out the loads, it’s kind of awesome.

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This post contains affiliate links.