Not earlene, and I am a bit late to the party, and others have given you great advice. But just wanted to chime in and say that I actually experienced exactly the same issues as you, when I started with making soap. This was a very long time ago, and did not know anyone that made soap, I didn`t have a computer, and I was at a loss. I got my recipes from library books, and they never mentioned these issues. So I just thought it was what soap did. (This was year 2000 and onwards.)
However, as some years passed, gaining more experience I started to notice the issues faded a lot, and I found out what
probably contributed to my issues back then.
1) Where we lived we had harder water.
2) When I washed towels and washcloths I washed at medium temps
(60°).
3) I used a higher lye discount back then because I used higher % of coconut oil, so 7 or 8. (those books did not give out very good recipes. 40% coconut anyone?
)
Then we moved to an area with a bit softer water from another source. I also lowered my lye discount to 5 (I use 4 now) as I gained more experience and started to develop more skills and making better soap. Also, I was adviced from someone to wash towels and washclothes at much higher temps, because that was beneficial for the washing machine since so many clothing must be washed with lower temps. The higher temps cleans the machine, eliminating sour smells. So I went with 95° (that is the standard highest setting here in Norway). I have done that for the past 15 years, and have never ever gotten the sour smell in the washer since doing that when I wash my towels (even when living in places of very hard water.)
That eliminated most of my problems. The remaining issues became completely gone when I first found EDTA, but I didn`t use that very long because of the environmental issues. About 6`ish years ago I discovered sodium gluconate from jungbunzlauer, and now I don`t even get any soapscum in the sink or shower. As in barely none at all. I was really sick not long ago, and did not have enough strengt to clean the shower for a whole month. It was in daily use, but still no soapscum.
So several factors can come into play. I can reccommend Sodium Gluconate. I use 10-13 grams per 1000 grams of oils. (I use a high ammount of lard in my soaps as well, so it also contributes to preventing rancidity along with ROE)