74
Does it really matter if you use white or colour detergent for washing clothes in a washingmachine?
(self.nostupidquestions)
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
74 points (98.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35892 readers
1399 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Dunno about the bleach part, that might be in some as well, but typically white fabric detergent contains optical brightener that counters the typical yellow tint of worn garments by emitting extra blue light (and your eyes perceive the full presence of the spectrum as white). That's also why this whitening effect will fade off if you then use detergent that doesn't contain brighteners: you are washing out those blue light particles once again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_brightener
AKA blue dye.
The process is also called "bluing" and existed way before they made up a scientific "you have to buy this product, you can't do this at home" name.
Well that unlocked a memory. I was on a road trip around California and stopped off in a small town to do my laundry. An elderly gent was already in the laundromat and the washing machine window showed bright, bright blue. He said he recalled that his late wife used to use blueing tablets to get the sheets etc white. "I couldn't find any at the store, but these toilet cleaning tablets are blue, so figured I'd try them."
This is what my late mother used: https://www.retonthenet.co.uk/vintage-washing-laundry-reckitts-bag-blue-reckitt--coleman-hull-dolly-bag-1960s-nos-dolly-blue-5487-p.asp
Toilet cleaning tablets?!
The kind that clip under the rim and turn the water blue. Some kinds you put in the cistern. https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/4e1b697a-ca2d-4243-96fd-b7ce27bdcabd_1.20c57db567797b6b4993bfb863b44d06.jpeg?odnHeight=180&odnWidth=180&odnBg=ffffff
I know what they are, was just shocked he uses them for laundry. I can almost feel my skin breaking out in a rash just thinking about it.
Ha ha yes, he was experimenting. I did wonder how he got on. Bright blue sheets I fear.
Optical brighteners aren't the same thing as blue dye, even though they have the same role. Optical brighteners absorb high wavelength (UV) light and re-emit it as blue light. This helps prevent the new particles from overpowering or covering the existing dye. Blue dye would just paint the clothing more blue, which usually isn't what you want.
So in this case it isn't just marketing bla bla for some old thing, it's actually a new(er) thing that replaced the old thing.
“Liquid bluing” is dirt cheap. You can still buy a small bottle that will last forever, for like $6. Just add a few drops, per instructions on label, to you load of whites and it can really brighten them up
Honestly I'm more in the "buy durable fabrics and treat them well but if they acquire a tint or lose color over time so what" camp. Good linen shirts for instance will still look great after a long time, never mind any fading. For some stuff it can even enhance the optics like the famed worn out jeans look.
It’s really the whites you have to worry about acquiring a tint over time. It makes them appear dingy, aged, even yellowed, so you may need to replace them sooner. Bluing or brightened will keep whites brighter for longer, so you can keep them longer
That's my point though: to me buying new garments just because they aren't as white as they used to be is both economically and ecologically wasteful. Ideally you just adjust your sensibilities or else purchase colors, fabrics, patterns less affected by tinging.
I have to admit though I'm looking at this from my own biased perspective of a single household though. I do basic separation of light, dark and hygienic (anything that needs high temperatures to kill germs) but also spontaneous mixed loads depending on what's in the laundry bin and what I need soon. If you're in a big household you can actually do real nice sorting like all the reds together, all the sports wear together, all the rags and towels, etc.