A swimsuit is the garment most likely to develop laundry odors and the one least likely to be treated properly, because it comes off wet at the end of a day when nobody wants to deal with it. Chlorine and salt both stay in the fabric after you towel off, and both keep working on it for as long as they remain.
What chlorine and salt are still doing after you get out
Chlorine does not evaporate out of fabric the way it seems to off skin.
It works into the fibre, particularly into elastane, the stretch fibre in almost every swimsuit made. Once it is in, it keeps attacking the polymer chains that give the fibre its recovery.
The visible result is a suit that sags, goes slack at the seams and loses shape long before the fabric wears through anywhere.
The laundry odors come from chlorine compounds combining with body oil and sweat already held in the weave, and the products of that combination are what you notice when a dry suit gets damp again.
Salt is a different mechanism with a similar outcome. Salt crystals dry into the weave and are abrasive, cutting fibres against each other every time the fabric flexes.
Salt also draws moisture out of the air and holds it in the cloth. A salty suit in a drawer is never quite dry, and that is why it announces itself the moment it warms up.
The rinse that matters more than the wash
The rinse is the whole thing, and it happens before you leave rather than at home that evening.
Rinse the suit in fresh water while it is still on you, or immediately after taking it off. Two minutes under a shower does more than any wash you will manage later.
The reason is that both chlorine and salt are still soluble at that point. Neither has dried into the fibre yet and both come out easily.
Once the suit dries with them in it, the salt crystallises and the chlorine works its way inward, and removing either afterwards is a much harder job with a worse result.
Rinse in cool water rather than warm. Warm water opens the fibre and encourages the chemistry instead of flushing it out.
Rinse for longer than feels necessary, working water through the lining and the seams, since the lining holds the most of anything.
If there is no fresh water available, carry a bottle for the purpose. This single habit does more for a suit than everything else in this article combined.
The wet suit in a closed bag
The worst thing you can do to a swimsuit takes no effort whatsoever, which is exactly why everybody does it.
A wet suit rolled inside a towel and shut in a bag is warm, damp, dark and airless, and it stays that way for hours.
Everything in the fabric concentrates. The chlorine keeps working, the salt stays dissolved and active, and the body oil and sunscreen have time to spread through the weave.
In warm conditions a suit left like that develops laundry odors within a few hours, and by the next morning that smell is established rather than sitting on the surface.
It damages the fabric too. Prolonged contact with concentrated chlorine in a warm bag does far more to elastane than the swim itself did.
If a bag is unavoidable, at least leave it open and get the suit out at the first opportunity.
Never drop a wet suit into a basket with other things, since that hands the whole problem to everything it touches.
Why hot water and the dryer finish a suit early
Elastane is the weak point in a swimsuit, and heat is what destroys it.
The fibre loses elasticity permanently above a moderate temperature. It does not shrink dramatically or look damaged. It simply stops springing back.
So a hot wash is out, and a warm wash is a compromise there is no need to make when cool works perfectly well.
A tumble dryer is worse than hot water, because the heat is dry and sustained and the tumbling flexes the fabric while it is hot.
One dryer cycle can take a season off a suit, and two or three leave it visibly loose at the leg openings and the straps.
Wringing does a related kind of damage, twisting and stretching wet elastic fibres past the point they recover from.
None of this is a slow accumulation you can afford to ignore. A single hot cycle is enough to notice the difference.
Hand washing, which takes five minutes
The wash itself is quick, and it happens the same day rather than at the end of the week.
Fill a basin with cool water and add a very small amount of mild detergent, dissolved before the suit goes in.
Use a gentle formula without enzymes or brighteners. Enzymes are aimed at protein soil that a suit does not carry much of, and brighteners deposit on synthetic fibre.
Submerge the suit and press it gently, opening out the lining and the gusset so water moves through both layers rather than over them.
Leave it fifteen to thirty minutes. Contact time replaces the agitation you are deliberately not applying.
Rinse in cool water repeatedly until no trace of suds remains, since detergent left in synthetic fabric holds moisture and holds laundry odors with it.
Press the water out between two towels rather than wringing. Lay the suit flat on a towel, roll the towel up with the suit inside it, and press along the roll.
Drying flat and in shade, where swimwear laundry odors begin
Dry it flat, in shade, with air moving across it.
Flat matters because a wet swimsuit hung by the straps carries its own weight in water and stretches at the shoulders and the leg openings.
Shade matters because ultraviolet light degrades elastane and fades swim fabric quickly, and a suit dried repeatedly in strong sun goes both slack and pale.
Turn it over partway through so the side against the surface dries as well, and move it onto a dry patch of towel if the first has gone damp underneath.
Airflow is what actually dries it. A shaded spot with a breeze beats a bright still corner every time.
It has to be completely dry before it goes into a drawer, and the seams and the lining are the last parts to get there.
A suit that goes away faintly damp is the origin of most swimwear laundry odors, and no amount of washing next time makes up for it.
Sunscreen and body oil, the part everyone misses
This is what catches people out, because they have rinsed carefully and the suit still smells.
Sunscreen is an oil based product designed to stay on skin in water, which means it is designed to resist exactly what you are doing to it.
It transfers into fabric constantly, and a cool rinse does nothing to it, because it is not water soluble in the first place.
Some mineral formulations also react with fabric and leave a stubborn yellow or orange discolouration, particularly on pale suits.
Body oil goes in alongside it, and both sit in the fibre and turn rancid over weeks, which is where the stale note underneath the chlorine comes from.
The treatment is a small amount of dish soap worked gently into the lining and the areas of heaviest contact, left fifteen minutes before the normal cool wash.
Do that every few wears rather than every time, since it is a stronger treatment than a swimsuit wants as a routine.
When a suit is finished
A swimsuit has a working life and there is no sense in laundering one past the end of it.
The clear signs are fabric that no longer springs back when stretched, leg openings and straps gone slack, and a suit that goes thin or translucent in the seat when wet.
Laundry odors that return immediately after a proper wash and a full dry are the other sign, and it means residue has bonded into fibre that has already broken down.
Chlorine damage in particular accumulates and cannot be reversed. Once the elastane has gone, nothing restores it.
Frequent swimmers usually get a season or two out of a suit. Occasional use with careful rinsing gets several years out of the same garment.
The single factor separating those two outcomes is whether the suit was rinsed in fresh water within minutes of coming out of the water.
The Jacksonville part
The season here is the complication. Swimming runs across most of the calendar rather than three months of it, which changes the arithmetic on a suit entirely.
A suit used forty times a year takes forty rounds of chlorine or salt, and the damage from each round is small and cumulative. Careless handling that costs a northern household one suit costs a household here several.
It also means the wet bag problem happens year round instead of seasonally, and there is never a stretch of months where swim gear sits dry in a drawer and recovers.
Constant humidity is the second half of it. A suit laid out to dry indoors in heavy air takes far longer than it looks like it should, and the lining is often still damp when the outside feels finished, which is where the laundry odors start.
Give it longer than you think, check the seams and the gusset with your fingers rather than trusting the surface, and put a fan on it rather than hoping.
Coastal salt is the third factor and it applies to pool swimmers too, since salt in the air settles onto anything hung outside and holds moisture against it. Bring swim gear indoors once it is dry rather than leaving it out on a line.
Where beach towels get the water they need
Swimsuits are a hand wash job, and everything else that came back from the water is emphatically not.
The machines at our self-service laundry on McDuff Avenue South take a full load of beach towels with the water volume to flush sand and salt out of the pile instead of moving it around inside a crowded drum.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a fabric care guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Chlorine and salt both stay in swim fabric after a towel off, and both keep degrading elastane and feeding laundry odors that reappear whenever the suit is damp. Rinse in cool fresh water within minutes of getting out, which matters more than any wash later on. Never leave a wet suit rolled up in a closed bag. Hot water and the dryer destroy the stretch fibre, so hand wash cool with a little mild detergent, press between towels and dry flat in shade. Treat sunscreen and body oil with a dab of dish soap. A suit that no longer springs back is finished.
WaveMAX Jacksonville is at 929 McDuff Ave S, easy to reach from Jacksonville and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 904-388-1717.