...and free us from bleach!

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    When I met my husband in Italy, I was starting to hang out at his mom's place when I noticed the number of bleach stained item there were.

    Back then, I thought it was some weird use to exploit saving in the house by the use of bleach instead of other, more expensive, commercially available cleaning products.


    Then we moved to Argentina I understood that bleach is a cultural thing - my Argentinian MIL still kept the habit to use bleach for a number of house chores, from cleaning the bathroom to sanitize sanitariums, remove mold, mop the floor etc.

    While I agree that it is cheaper and perhaps more effective than mixed cleaning products, bleach has is terrible downside of staining. I can't imagine a good place for 99% bleach except maybe in hospitals where everybody wear white scrubs (or at least it did in the past).


    After several years of living with my husband, he has stained bedding items, underwear, trousers, shirts, jumpers. Basically, nothing has escaped the damned bleach. I have a blue jumper with tiny reddish spots, a purple duvet cover with pink smears, red underwear that look like Rorschach tests and so on!


    What can I do with bleach-stained bedclothes? Can they be died? Or do I risk coloring the rest of the laundry forever? Are professional tintorerías cheap and valid?

    I have prayed my husband to stop with the damn bleach, but given it is the cheapest cleaning product - some brands are even enrolled in the Precios Cuidados fixed price scheme - and considering how proud Argentina is on having so many bleach brands to the point that La Nación is covering their brand name stories (Querubín - Marketing insólito: la marca que nació en un estudio de abogados y hoy desvela a las multis), I consider it a lost battle.


    What the bleach?! ||

    Ayyyy! I must defend bleach. I love it! Is there anything else that keeps white sheets and towels white instead of grey? Of course there is always the risk that a drop might splash on the clothes of the person adding it to the laundry, so care must be used to isolate it from colored fabrics.


    Is there any other laundry additive that gives the same results? If so, I’ll willingly try them.


    In the meantime, keep in mind that a tiny bit of bleach in water can cleanse fruits and vegetables of pesticides, E. Coli, lead, arsenic, tetracycline, streptomycin, pesticides, animal feces etc. (still hungry?)

    https://traditionalcookingscho…uide-for-washing-produce/


    On another front, I’ve returned to the apartment more than once to see that the house cleaner had used the kitchen sink rather than the laundry sink to soak the mop just used on the floors. Once, the bathroom plunger was there. Now the first thing I do after the apt has been cleaned is to clean the kitchen sink with bleach to kill all lingering pathogens.


    Not to mention that great, clean smell.


    The only downside to me is that it is, well, poison.

    But as this article points out, ““Yes, and a spoonful of whiskey won't kill you — but a quart might.”

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    It always beats me why Argentinian are so cleaning obsessed but make gross mistakes at the same time.


    For example, they wash themselves every day or more than once a day, but have no problem in sitting on the train floor or on the street.
    They seem to be health obsessed (by the number of physicians they regularly visit for all sort of problems, real or potential), but at the same time do not have a problem in sharing metal straws with perfect strangers, and kissing about anybody, or to eat junk food like national dishes all the time.


    I am sure bleach is effective, but why don’t use commercial detergents that do not stain? In the first world we live also without using bleach obsessively.



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    Probably laziness. You can just pour the bleach, leave it to do its stuff while you go away and enjoy yourself. ^^


    As the brand named cleaners aren't as strong you have to scrub harder for them to work...plus they're far more expensive. In the UK houses have carpets even in bathrooms so splashing pure bleach isn't a good idea.

    Well, I love the stuff. I use less than a liter in 6 months’ time, but use small amounts often, even to remove tannin stains from wine glasses (ok, ok, a trick I learned from an Argentine friend).


    But obsessive use of it? Try the Swiss! We stayed in a B&B in Romanshorn, Switzerland, and returned one afternoon to find our landlady scrubbing the already impeccably clean garage floor with bleach.

    The smell of bleach gives the illusion of it being a clean germ free environment even when there's an inch of dirt and grime lying out of sight. :D


    We have family members arriving here in November to visit us for the first time....better tell the missus to get some bleach in.