colored underwear, a bad idea?

General Questions
#1

I posted this on the comments board but no one responded. So I’ll try here.

Greetings knowledgable ones,

As I was reading through the archives, I noticed that Cecil, he whose dope is straightest, spoke of testing the cleaning properties of laundry balls or disks and detergents. The results - neither is necessary - plain water works just as well. On the other hand, speaking of the plume of bacteria coming from flushed toilets and the problems of similar bacteria on underwear, I note that the laundering of underwear should receive special attention. This suggests to me that someone has probably done a more in depth analysis of the antibacterial properties of various detergents (I suspect that the laundry balls do not do any better killing bacteria than the plain water). I want to know whether standard modern detergents kill the majority of bacteria or if I need to be sure to bleach my underwear (thus discommending colored underwear).

Thanks for any info.

If ‘meese’ was the plural of ‘moose’ then what would the plural of ‘mice’ be? :wink:

#2

I’ve wondered about the colored underwear issue myself. I admit, I don’t even wash my underwear in hot water because I don’t want it to dye the rest of my whites or fade. But I’ve decided not to worry about it. My husband and I should be immune to each other’s coliform bacteria by now, so strangers can just touch me at their own risk. Nyah!

And they should leave their hands off my undies to begin with, thank you very much.

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

#3

I have to say it - it depends on how anal you are about your underwear.

#4

For guys, brown is good for underwear.

#5

Good idea, asemayo - if your underwear is brown, you don’t need to wash it at all :wink:

#6

Hopefully, detergents kill the germs, so colored underwear is safe.

“If ‘meese’ was the plural of ‘moose’ then what would the plural of ‘mice’ be? ;)”

Mice is plural.

#7

Topic, colored underwear, a bad idea? Not if you’re the one washing it. But really, regular washing with soap and warm water kills the bacteria, that need a certain environment to live in. Inside your dirty skivvies is totally different than a washing machine. However, on the topic of washing detergent vs. laundry balls, I was once at a laundry ball seminar (I am not making this up, it was a sales pitch) and they claimed that the balls work because they change the molecular structure in the water, and that the dirt is attracted to the changes and comes out of the cloths. Then the dirt goes out with the water. They also claimed that that is what laundry detergent does, but that the detergent makers put in soap to make suds so that the consumer feels better, nee, that it is working.

#8

While I hate to dis Cecil on anything, in this instance his experiment was flawed. Consumer Reports tested these things and found that they did not do anything at all. Although normally Cecil rules, I trust Consumer Reports’ opinions on consumer products.

Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again

#9

Right, and Cecil found the same thing. The result of Cecil’s experiments was that laundry balls don’t work any better than plain water (in other words, they do nothing); and, surprisingly, neither does detergent. My guess is that the clothes used in the experiment had residual soap from previous washings in them, and this is why plain water got the clothes just as clean as using detergent. Cecil should put the clothes through several plain water cycles to get rid of the soap, before getting them dirty and repeating the experiment.

“For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes” - Francis Bacon

#10

Sorry, I should have said this the first time. Laundry balls don’t work any better than plain water. Detergent does work better than plain water.

Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again

#11

I was told by a my “aunt” who is a retired nurse for an ob/gyn (she’s been retired now for 25 years, so the info is probably out of date) that women shouldn’t wear colored undies or nylon undies because the dye could cause an infection, or the nylon traps the body heat in instead of letting it breath like cotton.

While the underwear making industry is probably better now with its dye jobs, I shall, pardon the pun, stick to cotton undies.
Ever notice how ugly underpants fit better?