How to Clean White Baseball Pants (Easy Mom Secrets)

Here is a must-have tip for busy baseball moms. Learn how to clean white baseball pants easily and effectively (even those dreaded grass and dirt stains). This time-saving tip is cheap and easy to use!

Calling all baseball moms!

Baseball season is back! I have three boys and two play competitive baseball.  The weather is finally warming up so we can get out – and we just had our first scrimmages of the season!

(ironically it’s snowing hard as I write this – but that won’t stop our teams! Here are the essentials you’ll want to pack so you’re prepared for any weather! 😉)

Thanks to multiple boys playing games and tournaments (sometimes as many as 8 a week!) for several years, I’ve learned a thing or two about cleaning baseball pants.

Cleaning pants is tedious and time-consuming at best, and frustrating to the point of wanting to bang my head against the wall when stains won’t come out. Especially the white baseball pants.

I’ve got a must-have tip here that will eliminate wanting to bang your head in frustration – and save you time too!

Baseball Moms Know the Time Commitment of Cleaning Pants

Baseball is already a time-commitment. As any baseball mom knows, the baseball season takes up SO much time in a week, it’s practically a part-time job all on its own!

Competitive baseball means tournaments, and baseball tournaments consist of several 1.5-2 hour games that basically take up your entire weekend.

At first, my boys only wore grey pants, which were usually a snap to clean – spray them, throw them into the washing machine, and done!

Then, the coaches for both of my sons’ teams announced that the team would be wearing white baseball pants.

The dads were happy and making comments about how sharp the uniforms would look. The moms…well we all let out an involuntary (but very audible) GROAN.

Because we knew how much work it would be to keep them clean!

Seriously, I’m convinced that whoever came up with the idea of white baseball uniforms never did a load of laundry.

I used to spend multiple precious hours every week and tons of energy soaking, scrubbing, and washing white baseball pants. Sometimes, only to have the Colorado red clay NOT come out.

Ugh, I did it all SO WRONG for so long! I tried using Oxy clean in the wash, washing with hot water or warm water, spray treating, letting Chlorox 2 sit on the stains (AVOID regular chlorine bleach because it will turn the synthetic fibers of white polyester yellow 😬) and more.

Fels-Naptha Soap: The $5 Solution For Cleaning White Baseball Pants

One day, after spending hours the night before working on getting a white pair of baseball pants semi-clean for early games the next morning, I was sitting at a game and noticed one kid had amazing white pants.

I asked his mom “how are your son’s pants SO white?”. Her answer was “Fels-Naptha” and I was completely baffled. What was that?

I did a little research and found Fels Naptha laundry bars in several different places: Amazon, Walmart, and even Ace Hardware. The cost? Under $5!

This yellow laundry bar has been around for decades. It vaguely sounded familiar to me at the time, but it wasn’t until later that I remembered my grandmother used to keep a bar in her home for cleaning.

I came home and tried it out. I fell in love because Fels Naptha worked like a champ…and it smells amazing!

How to Clean White Baseball Pants With Fels-Naptha Soap

In order to see how effective this solution is, it’s important to see how dirty my sons’ pants can get! Here’s a quick “before” picture.

I wish I had taken this picture when he was wearing them for the full effect…but I didn’t think to take one! I think you’ll be able to get the idea of just how dirty and nasty these baseball pants are…

In the past, I would spray down their gray baseball pants with stain remover and throw them into the wash. I tried the same thing with their white baseball pants 🤦‍♀️

No wonder they didn’t get clean!

Now after lots of experimenting, here’s what I do – and it WORKS!

Baseball Mom Secrets: How to Clean White Baseball Pants

Colorado is known for its red clay. Fun fact: the name ‘Colorado’ comes from the Spanish for “colored red”.

That red may look beautiful and striking when looking at our awesome foothills, but when it comes to cleaning white baseball pants, tough stains like red dirt can be a major headache.

Here’s What You’ll Need:

• Fels Naptha laundry bar – I’m hearing that this has been discontinued but you can still buy it at this link. See my note below for more info and alternatives.
• Sponge – I LOVE these eco-friendly sponges because they scrub without ruining the clothing.
• Spray Bottle of 2 parts hydrogen peroxide and 1 part Dawn dish soap (TIP: get a DARK spray bottle so the hydrogen peroxide doesn’t break down in the light)

Instructions For Cleaning White Baseball Pants

If you do a search for how to clean baseball pants, you can find a LOT of different suggestions. I’ve TRIED THEM ALL.

And I stopped looking after I found Fels-Naptha! The best part about this method is that it only takes a FEW minutes! Follow these steps.

Step 1 – Soak The Pants

For best results, you need to remove the excess dirt. Rinse the dirty pants out with cold water – or soak them in cold water for a few minutes.

This helps to remove as much dirt as possible so that it doesn’t just find its way back into those baseball pants when you wash them!

Step 2 – Treat The Stains

Spray any grass stains or stained areas with the spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide and Dawn soap. Let that sit for about 5 minutes or so to loosen the dirt and stains.

PRO TIP: Be very careful with using these tips on black pants because hydrogen peroxide has bleaching properties. Before spraying on visible stains, test on a hidden area first.

Step 3 – Scrub With Fels Naptha

Now it’s time to scrub the dirt out. Don’t worry! This isn’t a hard step but it does require just a little elbow grease. 

It’s not like scrubbing grout or anything that intensive – we’re just loosening up the dirt and stains and letting the Fels-Naptha do the heavy lifting with the help of a sponge!

With just a bit of elbow grease, I scrub the red clay stains and other stubborn stains out of the pants with the Fels-Naptha, give them a quick rinse, and then they’re ready for the last step. 

Here’s a picture where I’ve scrubbed one pant leg but not the other, so you can see the difference side by side. Looks good, right?

Step 4 – Wash The Pants

After the scrubbing and rinsing are complete, then it’s just a simple step of throwing the pants into the washing machine for a normal wash cycle with regular laundry detergent. 

And then you’re done! Pants clean and ready for the next big game 😁 Good job, Mama!

Now all your baseball players can get out there and do some amazing outfield dives – and you can sit back and enjoy their impressive skills on the baseball field (without worrying about laundry)!

Here’s a before and after shot side by side so you can see what I mean:

*DISCLAIMER: I have received comments from readers trying to catch me in a lie that these aren’t the same pants. Let me just address it here.

• The exact two pairs of baseball pants side-by-side in these pictures are NOT the same pair of pants. However, the RESULTS ARE the same. I forgot to take pictures immediately after the pants were clean and dry 🤦‍♀️, so I took a picture the next time my son put on his pants for a game.
• The pants are not the same exact pair, but the pictures were taken during the same week towards the end of that particular season.
• Neither set of pants is new in either picture, and they were both cleaned using these tips MANY times with the same results.
• The crease is from ironing – not because the pants are new (I love that crisp look so I’ll iron it in every 2-3 washings).

The point isn’t whether the pairs of pants are the same but whether the tips in this post work – and they do deliver clean pants, or I wouldn’t have taken the time to share them. 😉

Grab my handy checklist so you never forget an item again!

Has Purex discontinued Fels Naptha?

So, I’ve had a couple of readers reach out to me saying that Fels Naptha has been discontinued and isn’t being produced anymore.

I had to do a little research because I’m still finding it and buying it without a problem. It does appear that after more than 100 years, Purex has discontinued making Fels Naptha. 😠

What is an alternative to Fels-Naptha?

After a little more research, it looks like the best alternative is Dr. Bonner’s pure castile soap. I personally prefer the ingredients in Dr. Bonner’s over Fels-Naptha.

I have also heard recommendations for Zote soap bars, but I haven’t tried those myself either.

I mention this with the current caveat that I haven’t tried using Dr. Bonner’s myself for cleaning white baseball pants yet. As long as I can find Fels-Naptha bars, I see no reason to fix what’s not broken.

However, we do love Dr. Bonner’s castile soap and use it as our body soap in the shower because the ingredients are natural. If you can’t find Fels-Naptha, give Dr. Bonner’s a try and let me know how it goes!

A Baseball Mom’s Tips for Success

Here are a few helpful things I’ve learned along the way that may help if you run into any snags the next time you go to clean those white baseball pants (or white softball pants)!

I hope they make your baseball season cleaning duties so much easier as they did for me! 🤗

Use Cold Water

Use a cold water setting to prevent from setting any remaining stains that didn’t immediately soak or scrub out into the fabric.

I need to preface this by saying I rarely like using warm or hot water when doing laundry because it costs more, can shrink clothing, and can set stains, so they’re harder or impossible to get out.

In my opinion, hot water is essential for getting dirty dishes clean but detrimental to getting clothes clean.

That said, I would use hot (or warm) water if I found that it was helpful. I’ve tried it and haven’t found that to be the case, so I always use cold water – it’s cheaper!

Soaking Tip

If you find that you need a little extra boost in the soaking process so that more dirt comes out before you start scrubbing, try grating up some of your Fels-Naptha bar (with a cheese grater or in your food processor).

Combine some of the soap with some warm-hot water so that the soap “melts” and dissolves into the water. Let the water cool a little and then soak the pants for 30 minutes to an hour.

If you don’t have time to scrub, this can help reduce or eliminate the need to scrub. I haven’t found it to be completely effective all on its own for our red clay. But depending on the type of dirt in your area, it may completely take out the elbow grease portion for you!

Iron Out

Iron Out is a blueing agent product that you can buy that adds a small amount of blue to your white clothes to make them look more white. It’s really a trick of the eyes, but it works.

Now, my thoughts on Iron Out are that yes it works, but it doesn’t work any better than the method I’ve listed above, and it costs more. So, I would prefer to soak those white baseball pants and let the very budget-friendly Fels Naptha do its thing.

I hope this technique helps all you baseball moms save time and money when cleaning your kids’ white baseball pants!

Do you have more tips for getting those pants clean? Let me know in the comments below!

Need More Baseball Equipment?

3 boys in baseball for multiple years means I know my way around some baseball equipment.

Here are some of my favorite good quality, affordable things your child may need (plus, grab my list of tournament essentials so you always have what you need on hand for a day at the fields!):

• Batting Gloves
• Youth Baseball Pants
• Youth Cup Underwear
• Baseball Socks
• Baseball Bat & Equipment Bag (Rolling Version)
• Marucci CAT 9 Bat (Bat Grip) – or Easton Youth Bat – or Louisville Slugger Youth Bat…unfortunately bats are pretty expensive. You can find some cheaper than these, but they really don’t pop (bounce the ball off) as well. We’ve tried nearly all of them and these 3 ARE the best.
• Yeti Hopper Fip 18 – to hold drinks and snacks and keep them COLD.

Grab my handy checklist so you never forget an item again!

More Mom Tips and Tricks You May Find Helpful

• How to Know if You Have a Strong-Willed Child (+ free quiz)
• 12 Genius Time Management Strategies for Busy Moms
• 30-Day Fitness Challenge Ideas for Busy Moms

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