Q: Can I bath in bleach water?  

A:  Clorox® Regular-Bleach is NOT recommended for personal hygiene of any kind–consumers should always avoid direct skin and eye contacts with both undiluted bleach, as well as prolonged contact with the various bleach solutions we recommend for household cleaning and laundry.  Perhaps you are familiar with the instructions for using bleach for emergency treatment of drinking water.  That’s an entirely different situation.  For that, the bleach to water ratio is 1/8 teaspoon bleach per gallon of clear water, and the treated water has to stand for 30 minutes before drinking. During this time, the bleach kills any bacteria in the water before breaking down into salt and water.  While this solution is safe to drink, using a bleach and water solution for bathing is not approved by the EPA and should not be done.

Q:  Can I soak my dentures in Clorox®?

A:  There are so many different uses for Clorox® Regular-Bleach, but unfortunately cleaning dentures isn’t one of them.  I checked with the ADA website hoping to find some guidance to pass along, and thought this information looked useful: http://www.ada.org/2996.aspx#takecareof

Does anyone have some great tips for cleaning dentures?

Q:  How do I remove colored cake icing?

A:  With all those spring babies, I have a feeling this stain will become more and more popular in the months ahead!  And here’s how to tackle it…

Frosting usually contains butter or shortening, or some mixture of the two; and so you do NOT want to rinse the stain first before treating it.  Instead, start by gently scraping away as much stain as you can (plastic knives work well for this) to minimize the amount of stain you need to actually treat.  Next, pretreat with liquid dishwashing detergent—a good liquid laundry detergent will also work well—to solubilize (break down) the concentrated butter/oil.  To do his, apply a little directly to the stain and rub in.  Wait 3-5 minutes and then rinse in warm water. 

Now you can launder the item.  For white, bleachable items (always avoid bleaching wool, silk, mohair, leather, and spandex) wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label using your favorite detergent and ¾ cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach.  For colored items, wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and Clorox2® Stain Fighter and Color Booster.  Allow the item to air dry and then check for success.  This is important because residual oily stains can be hidden on a wet or damp item, and you’ll want to keep it out of a hot dryer to avoid heat setting a stubborn stain that might otherwise come out with a second treatment. 

Are there any other birthday related stains that plague people’s laundry?  I’d love to hear about them!

Q:  Is there one product that will get everything white, instead of using multiple products?

A:  While I wish we had one product that could do it all, a typical load of laundry isn’t always “one size fits all” in determining the best way to wash each item in the load.  White cotton kitchen towels?  Wash them with Clorox® Regular-Bleach and not only are they cleaner and whiter, they are disinfected.  Sounds good so far, but that white camisole:  can you throw it in with the bleach load, too?  Not so fast! Check the care label because it probably has a small percentage of spandex in addition to the cotton. And, unfortunately, spandex cannot be bleached.  For that matter, neither can wool, silk, mohair, and leather.  Clorox2® Stain Fighter and Color Booster is a great product for whitening items that can’t be bleached, plus it also improves cleaning and brightens colors compared to washing with detergent alone.  And it can also be used as a pre-treatment! 

But now you have two additives in addition to your detergent…and as long as textiles are made from a variety of fibers and people continue to get their clothes dirty, counting on one product to do it all simply won’t provide the best results.  For people who like to keep it simple, starting with a really good detergent and having Clorox® Regular-Bleach and Clorox2® on hand is a good approach.

Do you like to keep it simple with only a few laundry products? Or do you like to have every laundry tool possible in your arsenal?

Q:  How do you get rid of a gravy stain?

A:  Gravy is tricky because it is combination stain—you have both a greasy and colored component that needs to be dealt with, and it’s best to work on the greasy part first.  Start by scraping away excess gravy with a dull knife to minimize the amount of stain you need to treat.  Next, apply liquid dishwashing detergent directly to the stain and let it soak in.  Wait 10 minutes, and then rinse with a little warm water.  Now you’ll want to pretreat it again, and what product to use depends on whether the item with the stain is white or has color.

For white bleachable items (note that you should avoid bleaching items made with wool, silk, mohair, leather, and spandex regardless of their color) pretreat with Clorox® Bleach Pen® Gel.  Use the soft scrubber tip to apply a little of the gel to the remaining stain, and then wash immediately in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and ¾ cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach.  After washing, air dry the item and check for success.  Residual oil can be hidden on a damp or wet item, so it’s important to keep it out of a hot dryer—this avoids heat setting any remaining stain that could otherwise be completely removed with a second treatment.

For colored items, after the liquid dishwashing detergent pretreatment step described above, pretreat again with Clorox2® Stain Fighter and Color Booster.  Apply a little to the stain, rub in, and wait 5- 10 minutes (but don’t let it dry on the fabric).  Next, wash the item in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and more Clorox2®.  Be sure to air dry the item and check for success—repeat the treatment if a little oil still remains.

Does anyone else have stubborn stains?

Q: My daughter sprayed glass cleaner on her dress. It’s all natural, but the color is starting to change. What do I do?

A: Any time you get a cleaning product on a garment it’s always a good idea to rinse it immediately; being careful not to spread what you are trying to rinse out onto the fabric. If the color of the dress is permanently altered where the glass cleaner contacted it, you can try soaking the dress in more window cleaner to unify the color – hopefully the new color is OK looking. Another option is to see if you can match the original dress color with a felt pen (well stocked craft supply stores usually have a good selection) and color in the spots to at least keep the dress serviceable. This works really well for white spots on colored items caused by contact with undiluted bleach, but it might also help in your situation.

Good luck!

Q:  How do I treat laundry after a ring worm infestation?

A:  That’s too bad about the ringworm!  To disinfect white or safely bleachable colored laundry, wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach. For extra-large or heavily soiled laundry, use up to 1 ¼ cups.  Note that you should avoid bleaching wool, silk, mohair, spandex, and leather.

Unfortunately there is no product to disinfect any and all colored laundry.  For any product to make this claim it must have an EPA registration which is obtained by successfully completing required tests to demonstrate efficacy.  It’s good to know there are definitely some colored fabrics than can be safely bleached with Clorox® Regular-Bleach, and this primarily depends on which type of dye was used to color the fabric.  You can easily test bleachability as follows:

1.  Mix a test solution by diluting 2 tsp Clorox® Regular-Bleach in ¼ cup water

2.  Apply a drop to a hidden part of the item such as an inside hem, cuff, or seam and then blot dry

3.  No color change means the item can be safely bleached

I have had success safely bleaching many different colored items:  light colored linens and towels, cotton boxer shorts, and 100% polyester fleece, just to name a few.  Assuming your items pass, you can wash them in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and ¾ cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach as directed above.  For items that don’t pass the bleachability test, you can try the following techniques to at least reduce the germ count.

• Wash in the hottest water recommended on the item’s care label
• Wash any items of particular concern separately from other items to avoid germ transfer, and consider washing them twice
• Use the hottest dryer setting recommended on the care label, and dry items separately from other loads; or at least with some white towels so the underwear tumbles properly in the dryer.
• Finally, consider following up with a washer clean-out cycle with ¾ cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach to be sure the clothes washer is disinfected and germs don’t transfer to other loads.  In fact, clothes washer manufacturers recommend doing this!

Does anyone else need disinfecting advice?

I’m sure you have seen or heard about our Bleachable Moments contest where mess survivors like you and me shared more than 21,670 Bleachable Moments stories. I loved seeing that I was not alone in messy moments like potty training toddlers, sick kids, clogged toilets and… well the list goes on! Check out our infographic below for some fun facts about the household messy moments we received from all of these great messy moment stories. Don’t let the everyday, or even extreme, “yuck + oops” experiences throw you – Visit www.BleachItAway.com to see some of the hilarious and cringe-worthy messes, and get clean up tips so that all you’re left with is the LOL, not the OMG EWW!

In my household, we tackle the most messes in the laundry room. Which part of your household usually leaves you breaking out the Clorox?

Q:  How do I remove a red dye stain from a book cover that left a spot on a priest’s linen surplus (vestment)?

A:  For starters, if the vestement is silk, then you cannot use Clorox® Regular-Bleach to wash it.  If the fiber is linen then you can wash it with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach, but you should not use Clorox® Bleach Pen® Gel to spot treat the red stain (the pen is not recommended for use on linen fabric).  It’s tricky with linen because it is a fiber, but many people commonly refer to woven cotton items as “linens” too.  So I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.  If the vestement is made from cotton then you could spot treat the stain with Clorox® Bleach Pen® Gel by rubbing a little directly into the stain and then washing the entire item in the warmest water recommended by the manufacturer using detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach.  Allow the vestement to air dry to prevent heat setting any remaining red color that wasn’t removed; although I doubt the care instructions recommend tumble drying to avoid shrinkage.  If the bleach treatment doesn’t work, then you could also try RIT® Color Remover, which can be found at drug and hardware stores.  Just be sure to follow the package instructions