27/3/2017
How can risk of colds and Flu be managed in your laundry?...
Summer is over and Cold & Flu season is just around the corner. The way you treat your laundry, can reduce risk of Cold and Flu among your family members.
Here is what can be done to sanitise your laundry.
Boiling is an extreme method of sanitisation, which if possible, is time consuming. For boiling to be effective, temperature has to be 140 degrees. This is not possible for domestic washing machines. Boiling is hard on fabric and energy costs are extreme. Commercial laundries achieve results using autoclaves and ozone machines, to minimise their ecological footprint and energy consumption.
Bleaching laundry is an effective method of killing bugs, but is hard on the environment and not appropriate for anything other than whites. It is good to occasionally run your washing machine empty with nothing but bleach.
Mother Nature offers other effective solutions.
Vinegar is a wonderful salad dressing and used by swimmers for ear infections. There may be no end to uses for White Vinegar. A quarter to half a cup in the rinse cycle is effective as a disinfectant. Vinegar is safe to use in hot or cold water.
Vinegar is claimed to be a 'fabric softener', dealing with lime scale from Perth water.
While you're doing the laundry, give yourself a teaspoon. Vinegar is great as an anti-inflammatory, we are told, a key ingredient in a Mediterranean diet.
Grapefruit Seed Extract can be used to disinfect laundry and is safe to use at any temperature. We do not use it because we found availability to be an issue. One teaspoon in the rinse cycle is all that is required.
Essential Oils such as Lavender or Peppermint oil are potent disinfectants. One or two drops in the rinse cycle are enough disinfect. Used in winter by Bigfoot, occasionally, because it is already available to us through aroma therapy. Be careful handling essential oils and don't spill it on delicate surfaces, it can have a corrosive effect.
Tea Tree Oil, two teaspoons in a rinse cycle are effective as a disinfectant. A related option is Eucalyptus oil. Bigfoot's preferred choice is Eucalyptus Oil, because it is readily available through a well known chain of hardware stores. The hardware store offers a Soviet choice of one brand of Eucalyptus oil.
Even if you are laundering for one, Eucalyptus oil is worth using. It will make life impossible for dust mites and deter silver fish & moths.
