Laundry day today, and as I was preparing a load of white shirts, I checked the laundry tag on a new work shirt, because it’s a cotton/poly blend and all of my other shirts as far back as I can remember are strictly cotton.
I was surprised to see that the tag advised (via those inscrutable symbols) “do not bleach, under any circumstances.” I figured that it must be because of the synthetics in the weave and set it aside.
Then I checked the tags of every other white shirt (dress and tees) as I threw them in the washer, and was dumbstruck to note that every single one of my white cotton shirts had the “For the love of god, DON’T BLEACH ME!” symbol on the tag. Since I’ve been bleaching them regularly for as long as I’ve had them, I didn’t worry too much about it, double-checked the iconography (red triangle with an ‘x’ through it) and threw my new shirt in there, too, for good measure.
So what’s the deal? Why the bleach anxiety with whites, which, after all, are what bleach is for?
Do manufacturers just save a bit of money by using the same tag as they do on their dyed goods?
Are they worried that I’ll get sodium hypochloride in my eye and hold them responsible?
Are they fretting that the coloured threads in the laundry tag might fade, leaving me confused about what measures I can and can not take to keep my shirts clean and neat?
I have in the past managed to end up with with yellow-y patches or a general yellowish tinge after bleaching white cotton things. (Def. cotton, not cotton and polyester or anythign)
I daresay I did something wrong and used the wrong amount or I don’t know what, but my guess woudl be that I’m not the only idiot in the world who can do that, so that manufacturers might just be doing a CYA thing and warning everybody.
Or, of course, they might want the white shirts to lose all that good whiteness, thus getting more people to buy replacement shirts?
Like he said, in many cases white cotton blends are treted in the production to get an evenness of colour. If you re-bleach you can get yellowing in patches as the characteristics of the fabric change. Remember ‘white’ fabric isn’t actually white. We even add colouring agents ot our laundry detergents to make sure they aren’t white. Usually this is blue in the US. By bleaching you remove all pigmnents which can lead to an uneven colour that appears yellow.
The other problem is that bleach can eat away at cotton.
Seconding that, it breaks down the fibers. I learned that the hard way while trying to get an ink spot out of a pair of pretty expensive Z Cavaricci pants (circa 1991, remember those?) and putting a hole in the backside of them w/ a cotton ball soaked in bleach. I was a young fool of 21, didn’t know any better. At 35 I now have the wisdom of the aged ones!
It’s far more low-tech and time consuming, but if you have somewhere to hang your shirts outside, the sun will whiten them and kill bacteria as well. Throw them in the fluff cycle for a half hour then hang them till fully dry. You’ll have to iron them, but they’ll smell wonderful and fresh.
I’d still bleach the bejeezus out of white socks, btw, as those bacteria are deeply embedded in the thicker fibers and need killing.
My dad had a clothes line when he lived in Daggett. Nothing like the Mojave Desert sun to dry clothes quickly!
Since I have a house now, I thought I could hang my clothes to dry them (at least in the non-rainy periods). Unfortunately I live in The Kingdom Of The Spiders. Seriously, there are orb weavers of all sizes building webs all over the place outside. Not wanting to wear spiders, I’ll hang some of my clothes on a C-stand in one of the bedrooms and take the rest to the laudromat to dry.
That I knew – and I suspect this is why I’ve never had my whites get yellow spots from bleaching. (And never even knew it could happen.) I’m careful to make sure that the bleach is well-diluted before I put my clothes in there. Start the washer, add the bleach & detergent, let it fill most of the way up, and then load the the clothes in.
I haven’t owned a pair of white socks since I was in school. I think I became an old man at twenty or so.
