this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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No. Never have either. Napisan is plenty good enough for most things.
I can understand how it got to be 'usual', pre modern washing powder/liquid. But nowadays it just isn't needed imo. Using a blue bag on sheets and shirts isn't needed nowadays either. I do have a bottle of White King in the laundry, but I've only ever used it once to splash a 10% solution onto a brick wall that the local tom cats were spraying on.
I was perusing r/CleaningTips and someone was asking about bleaching sheets and I'm thinking why. I can understand in a commercial sense but not a domestic one.
As a kid I used to walk outside in my white socks and mum would be "you'll be scrubbing those". And scrub I did and inspect she did. So I know soap works. I even do it when my kid gets new shoes and leaves that black shit on her socks and they come out spotless.
I was just genuinely curious why people use bleach because I thought I was missing something.
I understand was originally to help deal with the smell of tallow soap used for washing. And as a sanitizer. Also helped a bit with the yellowing/griming that happened on whites washed with soap alone and inadequately rinsed. And by soap I mean yellow Velvet or lookalike bars of cheap tallow soap, not modern washing powders or detergent liquids. I understand you put about half a cupful in the rinse water, mixed it in well and then added the shirts/sheets so they didn't get bleach stains. This does not sound compatible with modern washing machines. And bleach probably does horrible things to the rubber seals of a front loader. Would welcome input from anyone that actually still uses it for that purpose.
As far as I know my mum never used bleach. It was always bluing to counteract the yellow. I remember her saying it would stain your hands if you weren't careful. I'll have to ask her more tomorrow but I'm pretty sure bleach was not widely used in her day.
Maybe there's a difference between hard water and soft like here in Melb. My mum used bleach when she lived in London, which has hard water. She said it was for the yellowing, but idk as this was a good many years ago and I may be misremembering. I do know from personal experience that washing sheets etc. by hand with soap most certainly does cause yellowing and something has to be done about it or everything turns grimy yellow gray.
Interesting because bluing was used in the UK as well. Maybe different strokes for different folks.