There’s something deeply frustrating about watching your perfectly good clothes slowly transform into dingy, yellowed versions of their former selves. I came across a discussion recently where someone was dealing with exactly this problem – their white shirts had turned an unpleasant shade of rust-orange, and their blue Carhartt looked like it had been through a dust storm. The culprit? Well water with high iron content.

Living in the suburbs of Melbourne, most of us are blessed (or perhaps sometimes cursed) with city water that’s been treated and regulated to within an inch of its life. But for those on well water, particularly in rural areas, the chemistry of what comes out of your tap can be a whole different beast. This poor person had a water softener and an arsenic treatment system, yet their laundry was still coming out looking like it had been dipped in rust.