Scratching Microfiber

[PremierAuto_NJ]

Just a recent mistake I made that maybe some of the senior detailers or experts may know a trick to. I am typically very careful with all my microfiber towels. I keep all my high quality polish and wax removing towels in zip lock bags and in a sealed container, wash them separate from everything with just detergent, and then back into the bags. Obviously the last thing I want to do is contaminate them and scratch a client's car.

Recently I was carrying a crate filled with about 100 fairly new towels into a client's garage for a maintenance cleaning. The weather was very bad, windy and raining heavily, and while walking quickly to the garage I (embarrassingly) lost my footing and dropped the crate. Didn't realize how brittle the plastic crate was but it shattered and all my towels were blown and dragged through mulch and dirt. No matter how many times I wash them I cannot get rid of the 100s of tiny pieces of mulch tangled in the towels. I cannot use this on paint or even the interior because of how jagged these bits are. I am a sole proprietor and while I am fairly successful thus far, it is still not financially ideal to be replacing close to 100 towels this often.

Story aside is there a trick to getting all the random stuff out of the towels or do i have to unfortunately junk the whole lot? Thanks ahead of time for any help!!

-Dylan C.

[cleanmycorolla]

You can wrap tape around your hand, but if it were me I'd bite the bullet and replace.

[Alek@DeepClean]

Replace. I'd never feel comfortable using them on the paint again. You may THINK you have all of it out, but you won't know for sure until you leave a nasty mark...

[newbdetailer]

Ouch. Yeah, best to delegate them to something else.

[trekkeruss]

I can't help you with cleaning out the ruined towels, but in the future you may want to divide up your towels into smaller lots. That way if you drop one lot, you'll still have good towels available.

[PremierAuto_NJ]

Thanks everyone, I ordered a new batch of towels this morning. I appreciate the replies! Next time ill try not to flush my money down the toilet!

[parttimer]

I feel your pain, a bit ago I was being cheap and washed my MF's with a foam tire swipe type pad and wash sponge with foam on it. Well it blew into a million pieces in the washer, needless to say all my only used once brand new towels are now interior towels. Bad thing, they were all blue dual pile towels, same as my exterior towels. They were dyed with yellow die and are now green so I can safely sort them. Lesson learned. Exterior towels are only washed with exterior towels.