In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 22 Nov 2020 23:11:19 -0500, Ed Pawlowski
wrote:

Any of you use Oxy clean in the laundry? Most of the time I just use
liquid detergent, a bit of softener and with whites, chlorine bleach.

After years of using liquids, I bought oxyclean 2 or 3 washings ago,
because of recommendations here iirc. it's hard to judge if it does a
better job, but at least I'm not paying to ship so much water around the
country. It's certainly does not seem to be doing a worse job.

I presoak with it.

After my brother got back from the army, even though he was healthy, I
somehow inherited all his olive green underwear. I guess he didn't want
to wear it anymore and our mother gave it to me. It wore out but since
then I haven't worn white undewear and I stopped wearing all white dress
shirts about the same time, and stopped buying white bed sheets, and the
only time now that I wear white is when I'm haunting the big house where
my family once lived.

So the last time I used bleach was to kill those strange things growing
on my picket fence, and to kill the mold growing at the foot of one
wall. It didn't seem to work on the wall but that was when I thought it
would also change the color back to white. Apparently it did work but
you have to paint again.

I have some color-safe bleach that I misguidely used to get dirty
clothes clean, or maybe correctly used when I thought still dirty
clothes had needed bleaching instead of better dirt removal. That's
when I swiched to pre-soaking** and that has been very successful I
tried to use a different detergent from what I used to wash with on the
possibility that the ingredients were a little different and I'd get the
benefit of both. Nowhere near enough data to know if that worked.

**I've also used pre-spotting, I guess it's called, and that thick wax
stick one can slide across the neckline. I guess that all works. Without
writing down what was dirty I won't remember, and I dont' check in
detail after washig anyhow. There is one product with two bottles side
by side, supposedly two separate chemicals, meant to be applied at the
same time. If they're not lying, it's probably a good thing, and I
bought and used it but didnt' keep track.


Frankly, I didn't believe the commercieals 20 years ago that laundry
detergents had gotten better. I thought it was just advertising, until
I read news stories that factory workers were getting sick from the
enzymes iirc. I never reed about that anymore, I presume becaue they
wear masks now, but I am convinced that the products are better than in
the past.

I stopped wearing undershirts about 30 years ago when my brother's last
green one wore out, and stopped wearing long sleeved shirts maybe when I
moved to Baltimore from NY. Maybe if I were going to a winter football
game I'd make an exception.


The reason I ask, I have a lot of socks to wash. That old wives tale,
take care of your socks and your socks will take care of you.