HE-494
IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH
Cooperative Extension Service, PURDUE UNIVERSITY, Lafayette, Indiana
December 1967
Elkin M. Minter, Home Management Specialist
MAKE A FRIEND OF BLEACH
Want to startle everyone with a dazzling white wash? You can if you use bleach in the right way!
If you’ve been using liquid bleach in the same old way, take five minutes to change your methods and give yourself a whiter wash.
Just add diluted liquid bleach about halfway through the suds cycle. This lets the brightener present in all modern washday soaps and detergents soak into the fibers before the bleach starts its work of reducing stain and soil. If liquid bleach and brighteners are used at the same time, they reduce each other and ignore the dirty clothes!
Sort Carefully
Certainly you must sort carefully to get white things whiter. Have you had white garments come out of the wash dyed a smallpox yellow, a dirty pink, a dingy grey or maybe riddled with holes? Probably you thought you had done everything right.
Probably you had -- everything except sorting!
The discolorations mentioned above are caused by a chemical reaction between the bleach and the special finish in the cloth.
Nearly all the special finishes put on textiles to make them shed wrinkles, wash and wear, drip dry, resist soil, stay crisp or shiny react with chlorine bleaches. Unless the label says the item can be bleached, the key to brighter washes is to sort more carefully so that the garments with labor saving finishes don't get in the bleach solution. For other sorting information see HE-490, "Out of Sorts with Your Laundry?" in this series.
Chlorine Bleaches
"How am I to know a chlorine bleach?" you ask. All the liquid bleaches and at least four boxed products, "Reward," "Purex Concentrated Bleach," "Action" and "Star Dust," are chlorine bleaches. That is, when dissolved or mixed in water, they release chlorine which bleaches stain and soil.
Always read the labels --if there is chlorine the label says so. Follow the label directions, because bleaches cannot be used on all fabrics and finishes.
Liquid chlorine bleaches are fast acting and effective, but if poured full strength on cloth, they do considerable damage. Most women use too much bleach. One tablespoon liquid per gallon of water, or 1/4 to 1/3 cup per washer load of powdered bleach, is
Trade and brand names are used with the understanding that no discrimination is intended and no indorsement by the Cooperative Extension Service is implied.