How you get white towels white?

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Originally Posted By: bvance554
How is today's bleach different from the days of yore? Thats like saying todays sugar just isn't as sweet as it used to be.


Some old dude told me the bleach they have today doesn't have the active enzymes that the bleach in the old days had. He told me the tree huggers were the ones pushing to outlaw it.
 
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
Originally Posted By: bvance554
How is today's bleach different from the days of yore? Thats like saying todays sugar just isn't as sweet as it used to be.


Some old dude told me the bleach they have today doesn't have the active enzymes that the bleach in the old days had. He told me the tree huggers were the ones pushing to outlaw it.


Old dude is off his rocker.
 
Instead of Oxy-Clean, my wife uses 1 scoop of cheapest powdered dishwasher detergent in the wash with our regular laundry soap. She only uses this powdered dishwasher detergent in the laundry. It's the same as Oxy-Clean!

Just sharing a little tip!
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Here we have Iron Out, which removes almost all the issues. It will also remove your skin!

Seriously, a great old school product that whitens towels amazingly well....
 
White towels are already white, you don't need to do anything.
For towels that used to be white but are now a dirty greyish colour, throw away and replace with black towels.
 
I'd think that, given the water crisis in California, you'd be finding ways to reduce your water consumption. Instead you're increasing your consumption just because you want to walk around in the dirt in your bare feet. Putting on a pair of shoes or sandals when you walk around in the dirt seems a better alternative than washing your feet and getting a bunch of white towels filthy and creating additional laundry.

It's that type of thinking that keeps the rest of the country from feeling much sympathy for Californians when they cry about water shortages.
 
When I was in college, I learned that NYS facilities are not allowed to use bleach because it has been creating bleach-immune organisms?

Once in a while, we would bleach our shared bathroom on weekends to get them clean but keep the janitors from getting in trouble.
 
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
Some old dude told me the bleach they have today doesn't have the active enzymes that the bleach in the old days had. He told me the tree huggers were the ones pushing to outlaw it.


Sounds exactly like the kind of thing some old dude would say and get spread around on BITOG as gospel.

Household bleach is 3% – 8% sodium hypochlorite, usually 5%, and 0.01% – 0.05% sodium hydroxide (aka lye). The NaOH is there only to keep the NaClO from decomposing too rapidly. This formula has remained essentially unchanged for decades.

That being said, getting your nasty feet towels white again should be a healthy squirt of Dawn, a tablespoon of Charlie's Soap, the appropriate amount of Oxiclean, beach if you want it, vinegar during the rinse cycle and dry in the sun. Use Tide or others if you want the optical brighteners.
 
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
I have a habit of going all over the property barefoot whenever I'm in my pajamas. Then before I get dressed and put my $20 boot socks on, I like to take a hot wash cloth and clean my feet. Whatever that stuff is that comes off my feet and onto the white wash cloth, that stuff don't come off in the wash. Don't even bother recommending bleach because all that stuff does is chemically destroy the cotton. The bleach they have these days is worthless.

What say you my oil buddies? You guys always have an answer for everything.
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Any quality laundry detergent should get them white. You can also try using "boosters" like Oxi-Clean too. However, if they get sort of grayish over time, but come out white and clean when newish, it is not what you are doing but rather your water.

I have that problem here. Our water has a lot of iron and manganese in it and nothing you do, be it the most expensive detergent out there, bleach, some supposed homemade concoction miracle for whites, etc... will work once those minerals stain the white fabric.

It may not be this but I wanted to point it out just in case.
 
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I'm sure kerosene on your feet will take any right off with very light hand scrubbing.




*Disclaimer for those stupid enough to do this, don't.
 
Water chemistry plays a role in the color of whites beyond the cleaning power of your detergents. Our well water at our prior home ruined lots of nice white towels embedded all the minerals etc in it.
 
Originally Posted By: racer12306
I'm sure kerosene on your feet will take any right off with very light hand scrubbing.




*Disclaimer for those stupid enough to do this, don't.


You've never cleaned your hands with ATF or kerosene?
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Originally Posted By: racer12306
I'm sure kerosene on your feet will take any right off with very light hand scrubbing.




*Disclaimer for those stupid enough to do this, don't.


You've never cleaned your hands with ATF or kerosene?


When I was a kid, kerosene was the primary parts/hand cleaner before we went back to the house and washed with normal soap. Probably not the best thing to use in hind-site.
 
1st - POWDER detergent. Tide plus Bleach (oxibleach) is the best in my opinion as it has quite a bit of oxi-bleach (same as oxiclean) and a good healthy dose of enzymes.

2nd - Add 2 tablespoons STTP (Sodium TriPolyPhosphate). You can buy it on eBay or from a trusted site like The Chemistry Store. This is the missing ingredient from all our modern over the counter detergents (industrial grade detergents still have it). You can google search as to why it was removed if you care (political drama)... but just know it's 100% safe to use.

3rd - Run a nice HOT water cycle.

OPTIONAL - IF (and only if) you have a separate bleach dispenser on your machine, add chlorine bleach. DO NOT pour it in the main wash bowl as chlorine will kill the enzymes in the detergent (separate dispensers add the bleach on the first rinse cycle).

This works every time! :-) No more dingy whites, and as a bonus it also works well on white t-shirts that accumulate those nasty green "pit stains"... zaps those in a hurry too.
 
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