Best Color Safe Bleach?

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. With all the bleach products around the market, are you confused? Which one's best? How do they work? Which one should I use? Stay tuned and I'll help you get the right answer for your situation. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. In this video, I'm going to help demystify how these bleaches work, what the differences are, and what you need to know to make the right choice for your laundry. Now, how this all came about is several years ago, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I did a video on this washing machine, a front loader washing machine, and the stink that sometimes occurs. And you can watch that video if you just stick around to the end. Boy, is it popular. Just stick around and watch the end card. But there were a lot of conversations about laundry products and approaches to laundry and all that sort of thing. Well, there's a lot of confusion out there about these different kinds of bleaches. And before I clarify that for you, if you find the video to be helpful, won't you like it? And better yet, like our channel or subscribe to it. And when you do, ring the bell and that way you can watch videos about the home, the shop, the yard, the kitchen. It's just a great place to have great community about those of us that just do it ourselves. All right, let's look and see what we've got here. Well, what I'm looking at here, this is actually kind of a side product that's not actually bleached, but we'll talk about it in a moment. These are two common types of bleaches. You're familiar with this brand name, but there's lots of brand names that actually make what is commonly called a chlorine bleach. And this bleach is found in most homes in the U.S. This type of bleach, which is known as peroxide-based or hydrogen peroxide-based bleaches, are found more in European countries. And we'll get to that in a minute why. But this is a very common bleach. How both bleaches work is they oxidize or break down molecules of stains. Or in the case, sometimes inadvertently, if you put this on color, you'll see it actually degrade the molecules of the dye and change the color or remove it altogether. But they both work in similar ways, but they go about it slightly differently using different chemical properties. Now, let's start with this one first, chlorine bleach. Here's some of the attributes of it. Number one, it's inexpensive. It's cheaper to make than peroxide-based bleaches. It's commonly found. You can buy gallons of it less expensively than you can these dyes. So it's inexpensive. Number two, it works really well whether the water's warm or hot. Works less well in cold water, but even tepid water and warmer, this bleach will really go to work and it'll do a job on it. Number three, it is a sanitizer. It is used as a disinfectant. As a matter of fact, you know this to be true. If you look at a lot of products, especially in this recent time where we've had COVID and other bacterial agents where we needed to take care of microbes, bleach type of products were all over the place as well as alcohol-based. But these definitely kill off microorganisms by their very strong chemical reaction killing or working through the cell walls of microorganisms and just essentially spilling their guts. So that's how this works. So it works really well. And you simply put it into the dispenser on your washing machine. And it's important you do that. You don't put it directly in the tub because those dispensers are meant to dilute it with water before it encounters the laundry. Okay, so that's our first one. Now let's talk about the second kind of bleach. The bleach that is in these is hydrogen peroxide. Yeah, that hydrogen peroxide, the one that you have heard about or used before in the brown bottle. And it's already known for its medicinal and antimicrobial properties. Mouthwash, you can, you know, if you have something in your ear, you can rinse that. It works really well because hydrogen peroxide is very closely related to water. Its chemical property is H2O2. It has an additional oxygen molecule that is easily released and goes to work and oxygenates certain things, including stains. Now, the advantage and disadvantage of this, while I said there were advantages, there's two major disadvantages, actually three, to using these type of chlorine products. Number one, you have to be careful you get the right percentage or right dose or right dilution when you're, whatever you're doing, whether you're making a spritz bottle to spray down a countertop or you use it in the laundry. Too much and you're going to fade your clothes. Too little, it isn't going to do the job. So you have to be a little careful, but good thing manufacturers provide good directions. But they do tend to degrade colors to reduce the color brightness. You have to be very careful of that. And secondly, they do tend to degrade the actual fiber in the fabric itself. So that's one of the disadvantages of this. The price point is a lot less, but you have to watch out or manage those risks. Going back to these type of peroxide type bleaches, and you notice OxyClean, if you're familiar with it or products like it, or a powder, this is a bleach powder, this is liquid, and they use hydrogen peroxide or related forms or forms related to hydrogen peroxide to do its work. Once this is wet and put into the laundry, then what happens, hydrogen peroxide goes to work, that extra oxygen molecule is released, and it does the same thing of working to break down the molecules that form the stain. And sometimes just to modify to where it becomes invisible. There's different things that happen. So hydrogen peroxide is a great ingredient. It's what is the key ingredient in these versus this. So these are peroxides, this is chlorine based. Now, what about the disadvantages of this? Well, it's more expensive. Number two, it does not work in cool or warm water very well. It takes hotter water to make these work. As a matter of fact, hot water activates them and really makes them go to work faster. Remember I said at the beginning that this happens to be more common here in the United States? This is more common in Europe. The reason is in Europe, many of the washing machines there have heater coils in them that boost the water temperature, some to boiling or steam levels, and then they use these type of peroxide based cleaning products, and it really does the job because of the combination of hot water and the peroxide bleach. So those really work there. So those are the two main kinds here. Now, which of these brands are the best? Well, rather than giving an answer to that right now, we have an article coming. You can see in the description below, there is a link coming soon in which I'll compare and contrast some of the most popular brands, how they work. We'll recap some of these if you want to get a little geeky. In the description below, I've also provided a couple of links. One is how chlorine bleach is made for the, you know, the super geeks out there. I like learning that sort of stuff and how that's made, and it actually begins with salt water. So that should get your interest. And then I've also provided a link to one of the FAQs on Clorox.com where they answer the question about these two different ones, what works better, what's working in them. You'll hear some of the things I just told you, plus some additional information. Now, there's one other thing that I want to mention to you, and that is these type of things. While they are not bleaches, it is interesting, like this Tide product is actually used to clean one of these machines. As a matter of fact, we did our monthly cleaning just this morning. And you simply clip the corner, you put it into the main drum, you run a regular cycle on the hottest temperature. That ought to give you a clue what's going on here. This is a peroxide type product. As a matter of fact, if I look on the back here, it says things like sodium carbonate and percarbonate. So these are all types of things that get activated and oxygenate the inside of the machine. It's an oxidizer, in other words, and kills off all of the stankiness in there. But what about something like this? Well, borax has been a natural whitener and bleach for literally thousands of years, and in the 1800s became popular out of the deserts of Nevada and California, where seasonal lakes would fill up dry fill up dry. This is a natural condition to create borax. And borax is a detergent booster. You would actually simply put it in with the detergent, and it acts somewhat like these bleaches do. As a matter of fact, if you look back here, it says natural alternative to color safe bleach. Interesting. And this enhances the cleaning power of laundry detergent. So it's interesting, there's products out here that all have competing claims, but essentially work the same. They boost up the detergent, or they go to work oxidizing either the inside of the machine to clean it, or the laundry itself to reduce the stains. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any comments or any insights you'd like to offer, feel free to do so in the comments. We read every single one, and you'll either get a personal response from Dirt Farmer Maggie, or from me, or from another fellow viewer that wants to weigh in on what you had to say. If you found it to be helpful, we said please like the video, and better yet, subscribe to our channel. And when you do, ring the bell so that you can see when new videos come out. And check out our new website at www.DirtFarmerJ.com where there's great blog items, articles, extended content on different subjects. You'll see this one come along, and we've got some new merch coming along too. Watch for that in the near future. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay with DirtFarmerJ.com with some lung.