How to Wash Medical Scrubs at Home, Step by Step

Wash your scrubs in their own load, make it the last load of the day, and dry them on high heat if the care label allows. Rinse or pretreat stains first, wash your hands after handling the dirty bag, and clean the washer lid before you unload. The details below cover the research behind each step, what to do with visible soil, and how to keep a shift routine simple.

TL;DR

• Wash scrubs separately from other clothes, and run them as the last load of the day.
• Handle visibly soiled scrubs with gloves, in a bag, and with as little shaking as possible.
• Studies point to hot washes (60°C to 69°C, or 140°F to 156°F) with chlorine bleach and a high-heat dry, but only if your care label and employer’s rules allow it.
• For everyday stains, rinse in cold water first, then pretreat with liquid detergent or dish soap, or soak in oxygen bleach.
• Toss & Go sheets are pre-measured: one sheet on top of the clothes in the drum, no jug and no measuring cup.

Table of Contents

• Check your employer’s rules first
• Before the wash: handling dirty scrubs
• The home washing routine, step by step
• Water temperature, cycle and bleach
• Treating stains on scrubs
• Drying scrubs
• How often to wash scrubs
• When your washer isn’t available
• Where Toss & Go sheets fit in a scrubs routine
• Perspective
• Try Toss & Go for your next shift wash
• FAQ
• Sources

Check your employer’s rules first

Before you change anything about your routine, find out whether your workplace expects you to launder scrubs at home at all. The CDC notes that its laundry controls apply to laundry services used by health-care facilities, not home laundry. It also says experts disagree on whether home laundering of scrubs is advisable. Where a facility requires uniforms, it should give employees infection control and cleaning guidelines.

The Association of Surgical Technologists (AST) goes further. It recommends that scrub attire be laundered by an accredited healthcare organization or a commercial laundry, because home laundering cannot be properly monitored against those standards.

In practice, many people still wash scrubs at home. If that is you, ask your manager or infection prevention team two questions:

1. Does the facility provide laundering for scrubs, or a written home-care protocol?
2. Does it set a washing frequency? The CDC says facilities that require uniforms should set that frequency based on the tasks performed.

If your job involves exposure to blood or other potentially infectious material, OSHA’s bloodborne pathogens standard says employers must clean, launder and dispose of required personal protective equipment at no cost to employees. OSHA has also said it encourages employers to arrange laundering of contaminated personal garments where feasible. Ask what applies to your role.

Before the wash: handling dirty scrubs

The laundering starts when you take the scrubs off. A few habits make the rest easier.

• Change when they are wet or soiled. AST advises surgery personnel to change into clean attire immediately if scrubs become wet or visibly soiled during a procedure.
• Bag them. Carry worn scrubs home in a dedicated bag, separate from the rest of your things. A washable bag can go into the machine with the scrubs.
• Don’t shake them out. The CDC guidance stresses handling contaminated textiles with minimal agitation, such as avoiding shaking, so lint that may carry contamination doesn’t get into the air.
• Wear gloves for visible soil. AST advises gloves when handling visibly soiled textiles, containing them in secure bags, and handling them as little as possible.

If scrubs are visibly soiled with blood or other potentially infectious material, ask your employer how to handle them. That is the situation where workplace protocol matters more than any home routine.

The home washing routine, step by step

The research on home laundering of scrubs agrees on a short list of habits. A 2023 review of optimal home and hospital laundering says to keep scrubs separate from other clothing and wash them in a separate load, preferably as the last load. It also suggests cleaning the washer lid before you remove the scrubs and washing your hands after putting them in the machine.

Here is that turned into a routine:

1. Put the scrubs straight into the washer from your bag, without sorting through a pile of other laundry.
2. Wash your hands after loading the machine.
3. Pretreat visible stains (see the stain section below).
4. Turn the scrubs inside out. Many scrub-care guides recommend this to reduce pilling and color fade. It is a fabric-care habit, not an infection-control step.
5. Add detergent. With Toss & Go sheets, place one sheet in the drum on top of the clothes. Never put it in the dispenser drawer.
6. Choose the cycle that fits your care label and your employer’s guidance (see the temperature section).
7. Wipe down the washer lid and the door seal before you unload, so the machine doesn’t re-contaminate clean scrubs.
8. Dry them promptly, then wash your hands again after moving wet scrubs to the dryer. AST specifically advises hand washing after transferring wet scrub attire from the washer to the dryer.

Why “last load” matters

Professional guidance, including AST’s, recommends that scrubs washed at home be the last load so there is less chance of cross-contamination with other laundry. If you only do laundry once a week, that is a good reason to own enough sets to wash scrubs in their own run after each shift or two, rather than saving them for the big weekly load.

The CDC offers some perspective here: it says the reported incidence of disease transmission linked to contaminated fabrics is rare when standard precautions are followed. The habits above are the kind of standard precautions that keep it that way.

Water temperature, cycle and bleach

This is the part where the research and your care label can disagree, so read both.

The 2023 review recommends washing scrubs for at least 15 minutes at 60°C to 69°C (140°F to 156°F) and adding chlorine bleach to the load. The CDC explains that laundering works through a combination of mechanical agitation, heat from hot water, and chemical factors such as detergent and bleach, as described in its laundry guidance. AST recommends adding bleach to the wash load, and cites a CDC range of 50 to 150 ppm chlorine to reduce microbial contamination during laundering.

Two cautions keep this practical:

• Home machines vary. In a 2025 UK study of domestic machines, only 3 of 6 machines achieved sufficient decontamination at 60°C during full-length cycles. A dial that says 140°F is not a guarantee of what happens in the drum.
• Your scrubs have a care label. Hot water and chlorine bleach are hard on some fabrics and colors. Chlorine bleach is for white or bleach-safe scrubs only, and only where the label allows it. Never mix it with other cleaners, and never pour it directly on fabric.

If your facility’s protocol asks for a hot, bleached wash, follow it. If it doesn’t specify one, a regular wash following your care label is the everyday option, and our guide on how cold water cleans and when a hotter wash makes sense walks through the trade-offs. If you would rather skip chlorine, we also cover sanitizing laundry with heat or peroxide.

Toss & Go sheets are designed to dissolve in cold water, and they work in HE and standard machines, front-load and top-load. You use them the same way whichever cycle your scrubs need: one sheet in the drum on top of the clothes.

Treating stains on scrubs

Blood, coffee, ink, antiseptic, and the mystery spots from a long shift are all common. The approach is the same: act early, start cold, and escalate only as the care label allows.

A few notes:

• Cold first. Hot water can set some stains, so rinse cold before anything else.
• Test colors. Try any pretreat on an inside seam before you use it on a visible area.
• Don’t dry a stain. Heat can set what the wash missed. Check the fabric when it comes out of the washer, and rewash if a mark remains.
• Whites. If your white scrubs are drifting gray, our guide to whitening white clothes without chlorine covers a soak method using pre-measured sheets.
• Deodorant marks. Pit stains are a regular scrubs complaint. See how to remove deodorant stains with detergent sheets.

Drying scrubs

Yes, scrubs can go in the dryer, and the research encourages it. The 2023 review advises machine-drying scrubs on the highest heat setting for at least 25 minutes, and describes tumble-drying as an important part of the decontamination process. Check your care label first. Some fabrics, especially stretchy performance blends, can shrink or wear faster at high heat. If a label rules out high heat, ask your employer which method they prefer rather than guessing.

A few drying habits help:

• Dry scrubs fully. Damp fabric left in a drum or on a hanger can smell sour.
• Clean the lint filter after the load.
• Take scrubs out promptly and fold or hang them so they are ready for your next shift.

How often to wash scrubs

The straightforward answer is after each shift you wear them. The CDC says it is up to facilities that require uniforms to set laundering frequency based on the tasks performed, so a surgical technologist and a clinic receptionist may have different rules. If you aren’t sure, ask. And if you can’t wash after every shift, owning a few extra sets keeps you from rewearing a top that has been through a hard day.

When your washer isn’t available

Not everyone has a washer in the unit. Apartment dwellers with a shared laundry room, travel nurses in short-term housing and students in clinical placements all run into the same problem: carrying a jug of detergent to a coin-op room is awkward, and you may not want to share machines with other people’s loads.

A few options:

• Pre-measured sheets in your bag. The Travel 3-Pack comes as three envelopes of 5 sheets, covering up to 30 loads at under 2 oz, which is easy to carry to a laundry room.
• Hand wash in a sink or basin. Dissolve half a sheet in the water, and see our step-by-step hand washing guide. This works for a single top in a pinch, though it is not a substitute for any facility protocol.
• No full laundry access. Our guide to washing uniforms without a washer or dryer covers work-around methods, and the limited-water washing guide written for deployment helps when water is scarce.

If you are new to reading care labels, this beginner’s guide to fabric care explains the symbols that matter for scrubs.

Where Toss & Go sheets fit in a scrubs routine

Scrubs mean frequent small loads, often at odd hours. That is where a pre-measured sheet helps: you don’t pour, you don’t measure, and you don’t leave a sticky jug on the machine.

Here is how we suggest using them:

• Regular load of scrubs: one sheet, placed in the drum on top of the clothes.
• Large or heavily soiled load: two sheets.
• Small load, or a hand wash in a sink: half a sheet. For a sink, dissolve half a sheet in the basin first.
• Never in the dispenser drawer. The sheet goes in the drum.

If you wash scrubs separately as the research recommends, you will run more small loads, so a pre-measured dose is easier to repeat. The Box of 50 covers up to 100 loads, so you can use half a sheet for small loads and stretch it further. For a gym bag or an overnight bag, the Travel 3-Pack is the smaller option.

Fragrance Free has no added fragrance or dyes. Fresh Meadow is lightly scented, and its fragrance includes Linalool. Every intentionally added ingredient is listed on our ingredients page, so you can read it before you buy. If you like comparing labels, our clean laundry ingredient checklist shows what to look for.

Perspective

We make Toss & Go sheets because laundry day shouldn’t depend on a heavy jug, a measuring cap and a drawer that never quite rinses clean. Scrubs are an extreme case of that: you need to wash often, often alone, and often when you are tired.

Our view is that the best routine for scrubs is the one you will actually repeat after every shift. A pre-measured sheet takes one decision out of that routine. You drop it in the drum on top of the clothes, close the door, and pick the cycle your employer and your care label call for.

We are also clear about what a detergent sheet does and doesn’t do. Toss & Go sheets are detergent. They are designed to dissolve in cold water and to work in HE and standard machines. They are not a substitute for your facility’s laundering protocol, and we don’t make germ-killing or sanitizing claims for them. If your workplace asks for a hot cycle or a bleach step, you add that step to the wash, and the sheet is still your detergent.

We also package the sheets in plastic-free cardboard, so the laundry room has one less bottle in it. And if they don’t suit you, our 30-day Keep It or Toss It Guarantee means a refund or a replacement, with nothing to send back.

Purecise

Try Toss & Go for your next shift wash

If you wash scrubs often, the Box of 50 is $19.95 and covers up to 100 loads. The Travel 3-Pack is $15.95 for three envelopes of 5 sheets, up to 30 loads, and fits easily in a bag. Subscribe and save 15% if you want them on repeat. Every order carries the 30-day Keep It or Toss It Guarantee: a refund or a replacement, with nothing to send back. Shop the Box of 50 or pick up the Travel 3-Pack.

FAQ

Should I wash my scrubs separately from my other clothes?

Yes. The research recommends keeping scrubs apart from other clothing and washing them in a separate load, ideally as the last load. That reduces the chance of cross-contamination with the rest of your laundry. Clean the washer lid before you unload, and wash your hands after loading and after moving wet scrubs to the dryer.

Can I put scrubs in the dryer?

In most cases, yes. The 2023 review recommends the highest heat setting for at least 25 minutes as part of the decontamination process. Check your care label first, since some stretch or performance fabrics don’t tolerate high heat. If the label says no, ask your employer how they want those scrubs handled.

What should I do about blood on my scrubs?

Wear gloves, bag the garment, and handle it as little as possible, as AST advises. Rinse in cold water, then pretreat with liquid detergent or dish soap before washing. If the soil is from a work exposure, tell your employer, because under OSHA’s standard they handle laundering of required protective equipment at no cost to you.

Can I use bleach on scrubs?

Only if the care label allows it, and generally on white or bleach-safe fabrics. AST recommends adding bleach to the wash load, and the 2023 review pairs it with a hot wash. For colored scrubs, an oxygen bleach soak is the gentler stain option.

How many Toss & Go sheets do I use for a load of scrubs?

One sheet for a regular load, placed in the drum on top of the clothes. Use two for a large or heavily soiled load, and half a sheet for a small load. Never put the sheet in the dispenser drawer.

Sources

• Optimal home and hospital laundering of reusable surgical textiles (PMC, 2023)
• G. Laundry and Bedding, Infection Control (CDC)
• Standard for laundering scrub attire (Association of Surgical Technologists)
• Bloodborne pathogens and laundering of contaminated garments (OSHA, 1992)
• 1910.1030 Bloodborne pathogens (OSHA)
• Domestic laundering of healthcare textiles (PLOS One, 2025)

Recommended

• How to Hand Wash Clothes: Step by Step, No Machine Needed
• How to Wash Uniforms Without a Washer or Dryer
• Fabric First Sweat Stain Fixes: Measured DIY Recipes and Sheets
• Save Clothes From Mud Stains in 1–2 Hours With Premeasured Sheets