Bleach will kill germs, no matter what color clothes they’re wearing.
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Add a little oil and garlic, and your clothes will smell like salad dressing. Always an added bonus!
Robin
Actually, this would be rough on Lissa’s undergarments. More appropriate would be gas sterilazation with a product like Anprolene (ethylene oxide gas). The initial cost would be high, however, and I believe she would need an inspection of her facilities prior to purchase.
Why, exactly, is killing bacteria found on your clothing a priority?
The human body is covered in billions of bacteria, which only incredibly rarely cause us harm. Unless your husband has multiple open sores on his body or an immune deficiency, a few more germs are unlikley to hurt him.
Washing everything at between 40 and 60 centigrade degrees will kill most things, hanging them out to dry in the sun, or tumble-drying them in a hot machine will kill a lot of the rest, and a good ironing will do for the vast majority of the remainder.
If the clothes look clean and smell clean they’re probably fine.
Worse than bacteria are parasites- my mother grew up in Africa, and all their clothing, including underwear, had to be ironed, in order to kill any eggs that had been laid in the clothing while it was drying. Jiggers burrow under the skin and are incredibly unpleasant.
Well, as I said, his work enviornment is very unsanitary. He works in a prison, and on occasion comes in contact with blood, feces and other bodily fluids. Hepititis is a problem in the prison. He has been vaccinated-- I have not. While I know the chances for germs surviving a wash and leaping from his clothing to mine are slim-to-infantesmal, I still would prefer to be on the safe side, just for my peace of mind.
As for underpants, it’s just an irational ick factor.
Well, you’re not likely to catch anything from your own, but if you wash somebody else’s unmentionables with yours, then look out.
Or if you’re trying to kill off a fungus you used to have…
I’ve found two worthwhile uses for chlorox-sterilized clothing:
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I can accidentally forget the wet wash for a few days, yet it doesn’t reek like a rancid dishtowel.
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Sterile shirts, when paired with bacteriacidal deodorant such as Michum™, completely eliminates strong male armpit stench (and keeps it away for about a week, even if I stop bathing. I’ve tried this several times. I mean the not bathing for a week! The rest of me reeks, but my unwashed armpits will only smell as bad as, say, my sweaty week-old kneecaps. Fairly amazing.)
After demonstrating #2, I conclude that the soapy laundry and hot dryer environment is a breeding ground for a certain stench-causing thermophile bacteria. FOrtunately it’s easily sterilized with chlorine bleach.
After reading through this and your previous thread, I have seriously considered using a “dirty” washing machine just for socks and undies (I have a spare machine and space for hookups). Not as good as sterilization with bleach and high-energy radiation, but probably good enough for all practical purposes.
I was probably the one that started the thread about the shower poufs. I work in a dermatology office, and the numbers of people we see with skin infections from something as innocuous as a shower poof is amazing to me. Of course, the humidity is very low here much of the time, and skin gets very dry, which makes it more susceptible to infection, so maybe we get more infections that less-dry parts of the country.
So many people think it’s silly to worry about germs all that much, but I look at it like this: I call around 10 people every week to notify them that they have a bacterial infection of the skin. There are 7 other people in my office that also do this. We are only 1 office in 1 town. Maybe we do more bacterial cultures than other doctor’s offices? I’ve worked in an urgent care and a primary doctors, and it was like this at those places, too.
There’s lots of bacteria running amok out there! Sure, it probably won’t kill you, but I’ve seen some very unpleasant non-fatal effects of pathogens. Going to the infectious disease specialist every day for several hours of IV antibiotics for 6 weeks or more would really cramp my lifestyle.
And don’t even get me started on viruses, molds, yeasts, and fungi.
If my husband worked in a prison, which can be a hotbed of bacteria, I’d wash my clothes separately, before his, and disinfect the washer after his. His in hot water, and a hot dryer should be enough.
scientists. Soap really only loosens oil and dirt that may cover germs so water can sloth them off. Some bacteria actually feed on anti-bacterial soap…no I didn’t mistype that.
greater than 140 degrees F for more than 10 minutes is the requirement for food, your hot water heater most likely is only at 110-120, this will NOT kill anything. Humans actually cannot stand the temperature of water needed to kill germs on skin…but soap and hand washing don’t actually kill germs, just removes them.
UV radiation from the sun is the best way to disinfect clothing.
I work in the medical field and can be exposed without knowing to all sorts of nasty things, the risk is not worth it. Not everyone has to worry about this (you won’t get sick from just washing your own clothes) but many people do (or should).
Shower heads have recently been linked to lung infections, especially plastic ones…have to replace them regularly, bleach won’t get past the biofilm.
And they end up sick. 
Exactly, most people who DIE are very young, very old, or are immunocompromised…everyone else just gets hella sick…well I don’t want to have either!
Bleach won’t kill mold/fungi/yeast as the chlorine won’t penetrate the cell. BUT the water in bleach will so bleach actually FEEDS MOLD because of this…never use bleach on mold/fungi/yeast…have to use fungicide.
You would think but the dryer doesn’t do much for killing germs, mostly because they don’t actually get that hot for long enough. The air is hot but the clothes aren’t getting that hot, metal buttons may but the cloth doesn’t.
Does bleach work on zombies?
In the past I’ve had clothes, towels and linens get smelly as soon as they got damp. I’m blaming this on bacteria that don’t get killed by regular washing at 40 degrees C (104 F) so now I wash stuff like linens, towels, socks and underpants at 60 degrees (140 F) and the problem has gone away.
Washcloths and dishcloths in particular do this. How about boiling them in water? Would that accomplish anything useful? I’m thinking of boiling small items, like washcloths and dishcloths and underwear in the microwave oven. (And for how long?)
Why would you do that? You can wash them at 90 degrees (194 F) in the washing machine, which is pretty much the same as boiling in water. But 60 seems sufficient.
Of course lots of stuff wants to be washed at 40. 60 seems to be ok for cotton, but 90 is probably too much for most stuff. Also, some detergents may lose part of their effectiveness (enzymes) at high temperatures.
Bolding mine.
I’m pretty sure you meant “slough” here.
The dry cycle does most of the germ killing in modern clothes and dish-washing machines. The trouble with undies is killing the germs without ruining the elastic. It;s a difficult problem. Lysol works better than nothing, but the smell it leaves behind is unpleasant.
If you are worried about shrinking them, you can hang dry them first, and then put them through the dryer on high. That won’t shrink fabrics (except wool, which shrinks if you look at it roughly) but it will melt some elastics.
You could soak his things in a bucket of denatured alcohol before washing. That stuff is fairly cheap at the hardware store. I would imagine methyl alcohol would work just as well if it’s cheaper. I don’t know what that might do to elastic though. I’m guessing latex might break down?
Anybody know?
What about triclosan? Can it be bought in bulk?
Assuming you’re just boiling dishcloths and the like, and the water genuinely reaches a full boil, it will have done most of the sterilizing work you can expect it to do in under one second. The amount of time is pretty much irrelevant.
I read “How to kill Germans in colored clothes?”. looks down: blue jeans, blue t-shirt, brown vest. I’m fucked…
I live in an apartment, and don’t have my own washer or dryer. I use the coin-op machines in the laundry room of the apartment complex. I wash on “hot” setting, but the water is really only warm (and sometimes just barely).
So that why I wondered if I could boil the washcloths and dishcloths separately in the microwave to sterilize them. Currently, I hand wash them separately, which seems to get them cleaner than not doing so, but they still get an unpleasant odor to them, when they get damp. I’m going to try boiling some of them and see what happens.
Same with underwear. I could try a pair or two and see what that does to the elastic.
So I wondered if anyone knows how well this will work – of if there’s any compelling reason why I shouldn’t try this?
There was a study once that suggested microwaving kitchen sponges for 2 minutes to (semi)-sterilize them, so I think it should be fine with cloth; I doubt you need to put them in an actual pot of water, just get them thoroughly wet and put them on a plate or something.
Victorian household manuals (which I collect) assumed as a matter of course that all the kitchen rags would be “scalded” (either pouring boiling water over them or briefly boiling) every day, to keep them from “souring”. (The special rag for cleaning the chamber pots was scalded separately, along with the pots themselves.)
White cotton clothing (which would include underwear) was also boiled as part of normal laundering (usually in a cute copper pot), if you could manage it, although that was more for the bleaching effect.
This could be due to mold/mildew, not necessarily bacteria.