I'm embarrassed to even bring this up but I really need an answer and know that someone here might have one. I've been doing laundry since Dorothy found the scarecrow it seems and never had a problem. Now, all of a sudden, all my white (shirts, specifically) have turned yellow . I've bleached and bleached. Still yellow. My water is hard - but no harder than it was a year ago! My technique hasn't changed. I'm lost! Short of buying new shirts can you think of anything I might try? It's quite irritating as I like my white shirts. Oh, and just to make it puzzling-ier ---> my white socks, etc., come out very nicely. I hate housework...

Are they pure cotton?? If they are you could boil 'em. In a big saucepan with some soap powder. Before Napisan, I used to boil the nappies.
OR you could look for Dylon, the white one... that's like a white dye.
Sigh... I hate housework too......

What kind of bleach did you buy, Gats? It really does make a difference if you buy Clorox or Always Save. The latter doesn't work.

Housework is just wrong. Every morning I get up, and the house that looked fairly okay yesterday is a cave again.

Hang on here, I see the word bleach. I know it was a very long time ago but back in the days when my sister (and me for that matter) were at school and had to wear white gloves as part of our summer uniform (yeah, yeah) my sister decided to make hers whiter by bleaching them - they turned yellow. The gloves were not cotton, they were nylon as I remember.

Stick with the yellow, you might start a fashion trend.

I think you are drying your shirts at too high a temperature for too long a period of time.

Just call me Mr. Mom

I'm with Sue - bleach is not always right for making things white.
If they ARE cotton, you can get things white again by hanging them in the sun to dry - this may also work for nylon.

Or use color-safe bleach, or try a detergent with bleach alternative. Bleach can turn things yellow, especially if you keep doing it. Also, if your shirts aren't getting thoroughly rinsed and you're drying on a high heat, that might cause it. I would second the hanging in the sun... that does wonders for most things.

As you're in the states, I'd say the new products are probably going to work. Borox adds punch to laundry and I've used it when I had to wash diapers long ago. The stuff that Copago mentioned works wonders with stains of a 'biological' nature too. I cannot remember what it's called in the US though.

Good thing they are white as you can attack them all together.
I don't think anyone in this house has anything white but they're all various degrees of colors.

We just get the, 'oops, this is probably water but might be olive oil' stains.

See! You guys know everything . I just peeked out to look at my shirts in the sun and, while not white yet, the difference is rather startling after just a couple of hours out there! How we complicate (or forget) things, too. Or at least I do. I used to hang my stuff out on the line almost all the time and haven't done so in a couple of years AND I rarely used bleach before then. When both of those things changed the coloring glitch began - now, I ask you, why couldn't I have logically figured that out? But thank you for the great suggestions (and I'll add that the whole notion of boiling my shirts was rather daunting but I had the pot all ready if it got down to that ).

The sun is a wonderful thing. Some years back in a fit of enthusiasm I hung out a row of powder blue towels, then couldn't be bothered to bring them in at the end of the day, in fact I left them out there a few days, now I have some VERY pale blue towels as well as some powder blue ones!

Hanging in the sun is great for all kinds of things, including smell. Working in the moving and storage industry, we sometimes have people default on storage lots, and then we can sell their stuff at auction. I won a rather large lot of items that included some cool quilting fabrics, though they were secondary to the cross-stitch books I got for my mother-in-law. However, the fabrics had been in storage for quite a while and smelled decidedly musty, and even mildewy in a few places. A quick wash in Woolite (after which they still smelled, just a little less than before) and a few carefully watched hours in the sun, and they were fresh as they day they were born!

Hello sunshine.

Yellow underarm shirt stains are likely caused by a combination of deodorant and perspiration. Many deodorants and antiperspirants contain aluminum salts. When these salts are combined with laundry detergent, especially in cooler water settings, they are not easily dissolved, and they remain on the fabric.

To remove the stains, try soaking the shirts in warm water with an enzyme pre-soak product or rubbing the soiled area with white vinegar. Wash in the hottest water safe for the fabric. If the stain remains, dampen and sprinkle stain with meat tenderizer. Let stand for about an hour, and launder again.

To avoid new stains from forming, always wash the shirts in the hottest water safe for the fabric. Also, allow antiperspirant to dry completely before dressing.

Hard Water Stain Removal from Laundry
If your water is leaving marks on your clothes this means that you likely have hard water. The hardness of water causes it to interfere with the effectiveness of detergent and leaves a film on the clothing. To remove this film try soaking the clothes in a mixture of one gallon of water and one cup of vinegar. To prevent this from happening in the future, you can add a water conditioning product along with the detergent, or add a cup of borax. It will soften the water and freshen the wash as well.
http://cleaning.lifetips.com/tip/80940/s...in-removal.html