A bag carries raw chicken on Monday, a damp swimsuit on Wednesday and gym shoes on Friday, then hangs on a hook and does the same again next week. Tote bags are among the few things in a house used constantly and washed almost never, and the ones living in a car are the worst of the lot.
What builds up in tote bags
Start with what actually goes into one, because the list is worse than the bag looks.
Meat and poultry packaging leaks. Supermarket trays are not sealed at the base and juice runs down into the bottom seam, which is the one part nobody inspects.
Produce brings soil off root vegetables and whatever is sitting on unwashed fruit.
Gym clothes and shoes leave sweat behind, along with whatever was on a changing room floor.
Damp swimwear and towels put water into canvas and leave it there, which is what turns a passing smell into a lasting one.
Then there is what the bag picks up on its own. A shop floor, a footwell, a pavement, the inside of a trunk.
None of that is unusual and none of it calls for alarm. It does mean a reusable bag is laundry rather than equipment, and it belongs in a wash on some kind of schedule.
Which bags can go in a machine
Plain cotton canvas is the easy case. It washes like any heavy cotton item and there is very little to go wrong.
Untreated cotton twill and calico behave the same way.
Most plain polyester and nylon bags wash fine, including the thin foldaway kind, though those do better inside a mesh bag so the straps cannot wrap around anything.
Woven polypropylene bags, the crinkly ones from a supermarket, can be washed where the label allows it. Hand washing is safer for those because the weave distorts easily.
Jute and hessian are a maybe. Cold hand wash only, and they have to dry fully and fast, because natural fibre that thick holds water a long time.
With no label at all, judge a bag by what it is made from and how it is built rather than by hoping.
Which bags cannot
Insulated cooler bags are the clearest no. A foam or foil layer is sealed between the outer and the lining, water gets in through the seams and does not come back out, and trapped moisture inside a liner is a worse outcome than the dirt you started with. Wipe those inside and out with hot soapy water and leave them open to air.
Laminated bags, meaning anything with a shiny coated finish, crack and peel. The coating is a plastic film bonded to fabric and machine agitation separates the two.
Anything with a rigid base insert needs that insert out first, and if it is sewn in rather than sitting in a sleeve, the whole bag becomes a hand wash.
Printed vinyl designs crack. That heavy raised print on a promotional bag is a plastic film heat pressed onto fabric, and heat plus flexing breaks it up.
Leather trim, leather handles and any stiffened structured base are hand wash or wipe clean.
Bags with unfinished metal hardware or grommets can rust and mark the fabric, so those get hand washed and dried quickly.
Getting a bag ready to wash
Empty it completely and turn out every internal pocket, since a forgotten receipt turns into confetti across the entire load.
Take the base insert out. Most tote bags let it slide straight up and out, and it goes back in after drying.
Shake the bag out hard, outdoors if possible. There is usually a surprising amount of loose material sitting in the bottom seam.
Treat real stains before washing rather than trusting the cycle with them. Food and drink marks on canvas respond to liquid detergent worked in and left twenty minutes.
Turn the bag inside out. The inside is the dirty side, and it is also how a printed exterior stops taking the abrasion.
Fasten or tie anything that could catch, and put long straps and drawstrings inside a mesh bag.
The wash itself
Cold or warm water, never hot. Heat shrinks cotton canvas noticeably, and canvas shrinkage shows up as a bag that no longer sits square.
A normal cycle suits plain canvas. Use a gentle cycle for anything printed, coated or lightly built.
Ordinary detergent and a modest amount of it. Canvas is thick and rinses slowly, so a heavy dose leaves residue that attracts dirt faster afterwards.
Wash food bags separately from everything else, and wash gym bags separately again.
Half a cup of white vinegar in the rinse helps a set in smell, and an oxygen based soak before the wash does more for a musty bag than any cycle setting will.
Do not overload. Tote bags need room to open up in the drum or the inside never really gets washed, which was the whole point.
Drying, which is where bags are decided
Air dry, and do it inside out. That puts the surface that was wet with the most on it into the moving air.
The dryer is what destroys printed designs, since heat softens the print film while tumbling flexes it, and the cracking that follows cannot be repaired.
Heat shrinks canvas as well, and a shrunk panel against unshrunk webbing handles puckers along the seam permanently.
Hang the bag open rather than folded. A bag dried folded keeps damp in the fold, which is precisely the state that produces the smell being washed out.
Give it longer than seems necessary. Seams, the base and any doubled fabric hold water long after the sides feel dry, and a bag put away at that point sours within a day.
Put the base insert back only once the bag is completely dry, and wipe the insert down while it is out.
How often, and when a bag is past washing
Bags carrying meat or fish want washing weekly, or immediately after any leak, whichever comes first.
General grocery tote bags every couple of weeks is realistic and enough.
Gym bags after any wet kit has been inside, and that is not a schedule, it is the same day.
Keep the groups apart in use as well as in the wash. A bag that carries raw food should not also carry a towel.
A bag is past washing when the seams have gone, when a coating has cracked and is flaking, when an insulated liner has torn and holds water, or when a smell survives a proper soak and full drying. That last one usually means growth in a foam layer or in a seam nothing can reach.
Canvas is worth repairing at the handles, which is where tote bags almost always fail first, and it is worth doing because the fabric itself outlasts everything else on the bag.
The Tempe part
The car is what makes this a bigger problem here than it is elsewhere.
A closed vehicle in the sun reaches interior temperatures far above the air outside and it gets there in minutes rather than hours. A bag left inside is held at that temperature for as long as the vehicle sits.
Warmth speeds up everything happening in a bag that is not perfectly clean. A trace of meat juice in a bottom seam, or a towel folded in damp, goes from unnoticeable to obvious across a single afternoon instead of over a week.
Damp is the combination that really turns. A wet swimsuit or a sweated through shirt inside a bag in a hot trunk is warm and wet at once, and that bag needs more than a rinse by the time it comes back indoors.
The practical rules are short. Carry tote bags indoors rather than leaving them in the vehicle, store them open rather than folded and stacked, and never put anything damp into one that is about to sit in a parked car. A bag that has been through that repeatedly needs a soak rather than a wash, and some of them never come back.
Where a stack of bags gets washed at once
Bags are bulky and awkward and they do better as their own load than mixed in with clothes.
The machines at our self-service laundry on East Broadway Road take a full stack of canvas with enough water behind it that each bag opens out in the drum instead of staying folded shut, which is the only way an inside gets clean.
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 laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Reusable tote bags carry raw food, damp kit and everything off a shop floor, then sit warm in a car. Plain cotton canvas and most polyester ones machine wash. Insulated coolers, laminated or coated bags, anything with a sewn in rigid base, and heavy printed vinyl do not, and those get wiped down or hand washed instead. Pull the base insert out, empty every pocket, turn the bag inside out, and wash cold or warm with a modest amount of detergent, food bags apart from gym bags. Air dry inside out, hanging open, and allow longer than looks necessary, because a bag put away damp in a fold is the whole problem starting again.
WaveMAX Tempe is at 1845 E Broadway Rd #114, easy to reach from Tempe and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 480-818-9960.