The word “clean” can be defined so many ways.  My definition of a clean room is definitely not the same as my daughter’s definition of a clean room. I always referred to my laundry as clean, but never really dug into what I expected that definition to mean.  Then we were put to the test and afterwards came out looking at things very differently.

See a few months ago, my 10 year old son was very sick with CDiff (clostridium difficile); a bacterial infection in his intestines.  This bacteria is very contagious and incredibly difficult to destroy.  We began doing as much research as possible,  diving into how to get rid of this bacteria and in the process learning a lot about cleaning products!  Such as, you know how every cleaning bottle you own says it kills 99.9% of germs and bacteria….well CDiff is in the .1%.  

The more I read, the more it was revealed that bleach was the only way to kill this particular bacteria.  Bleach!  I kind of panicked.  I don’t bleach, I have always been afraid to use bleach because I thought I would ruin everything.  Hesitation set aside, bleach has become a big part of our lives over the last 3 months.  Thankfully I didn’t ruin anything.

What does clean mean?

While I learned a lot about cleaning products, the biggest change is my definition of clean laundry.  My husband and I gained a lot of knowledge about laundry and how a washer and dryer function. The purpose of detergent and more.  While most of you will not be faced with eliminating CDiff spores (I hope), many may have kids that have accidents, or will get cold and flu bugs in the household.  What I learned will change the way I approach laundry from here on out.  

I simply want to provide information for you, not to scare you…but to inform you.  After so many years of doing laundry…I was blown away by some of this info and maybe you will too.

What Does Laundry Detergent Actually Do?

When you think of laundry detergent, you think clean.  It is the product you use to clean your clothes.  So have you ever looked at what your laundry detergent actually claims to do?  Tide says that it Fights stains and odor, freshening, brightening & whitening and for clothing care.  Not for sanitizing or killing germs. 

Seventh Generation has a laundry detergent with less chemicals that claims to fight stains, but again no where does it claim to kill germs.

The fact is…laundry detergent doesn’t claim to sanitize your laundry.  They promise to get the stains off of them and make your laundry smell nice.  And really the problem isn’t that they don’t do what they claim, it is that I expected them to do more than that.  It is that I actually assumed laundry detergent did more than what they really do.   My definition of clean laundry,  would be no stains, smelling nice and minus the germs and bacteria.  

When a child gets sick in bed, I expected the laundry detergent to clean the sheets, when a child has an accident I expected the pants to get clean and sanitized in the laundry.   You see the problem, I guess I had just never researched enough…probably like most people.

Sanitizing Your Laundry

Over the last few months, I realized the importance of sanitizing your laundry.  Not that I am a germ crazy, but our clothes really aren’t getting clean if they are spreading bacteria.  Also in my particular case, I had no choice.  For the health of our family, I needed to use a special germicidal bleach (regular bleach works too) to kill the bacteria and sanitize bedding. 

Bleach is definitely one of the most common ways to sanitize your laundry.  I bleached gray flannel sheets with no problem and other items that I expected to ruin (but was willing to because they had to be sanitized).  I found out that a lot depends on the way a fabric is dyed to determine if bleach will ruin the item or not.  However, always check a small spot first before adding bleach to a load.  I was pleasantly surprised with all the different things I bleached.  You can bleach more than you think!

Sanitizing without chemicals!  If you don’t like to use chemicals, you can also sanitize your laundry by using steam or high water temperatures.  Some laundry machines actually have a sanitize cycle now.  During this cycle, steam or water is heated up to a temperature of 165 degrees to kill germs and microorganisms.  

If you don’t have a sanitize cycle you can always look up your water temperatures.  If it reaches 165 degrees you can wash your linens and bedding in hot water and it will kill germs.

Does Color Safe Bleach Sanitize?

Don’t be fooled.  I may be a little harsh in saying this, but color safe bleach is more of a glorified stain lifter.  It does not sanitize like normal bleach because it is made with hydrogen peroxide instead of sodium hypochlorite.  Bleach, which is commonly referred to as a chlorine bleach is what kill germs and bacteria.  So color safe bleach will not sanitize your laundry.

Click here to see THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLOR SAFE BLEACH AND CHLORINE BLEACH

The most important thing to emphasize, is that your laundry detergent will not sanitize your laundry and if needed, you will need to find another method to do so.  They say knowledge is power.  And again my intention was not to frighten you or gross you out, but to inform you.  When my son went through three rounds of CDiff in a month and a half, we began to look at sanitizing in a whole new way.  Our laundry was the biggest eye opener!  

I hope this post enlightened you, just as it did for me as I researched.  Thanks for checking it out!

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