What about soaking it in some bleach and then washing it in the hottest water possible?

Sue

Here is an article about vinegar and germs. We don't heat the water to 160 to wash our hands.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/vinegar-kills-bacteria-mold-germs.html#

AND remind your gf, that if you then put the clothes into a hot dryer, any remaining germs should be annihilated, anyway.

BTW--you may also want to remind her that as far as urine goes? A healthy person's urine is sterile. It's supposed to be SAFER (germ-wise) than saliva, so maybe THAT's why the dishwasher needs to heat the water and the clothes washer doesn't.

goodness if i'd tossed out every soiled piece of clothing my kids had, we would have gone broke...we pre-rinsed, washed in hot water with specific detergents, and were fine...

and as for the dishwasher, it partly does that last hot water rinse, is to get stuff dry!

sounds as if gf is a bit o/c/d...

Yes, gf gets freaked out with anything potty related.

Is color safe bleach as sanitary as regular bleach?

I guess that gf is waaaayyyyy too young to remember when diapers were not disposable, but were actually washed. Now, some wealthy people had diaper service handle the laundry, but most of us just washed our own. And we were lucky enough to have a washing machine and no drier, so we hung the diapers out on the line to dry. Or we even took the dirty diapers to the laundromat!

Ask your friend if she thinks that diapers have always been disposable?

I always washed all of my babies diapers, no disposables until with the last one and then only if we went someplace. Yes, they hung on the clothesline as well. I guess the sun is good at bleaching.

Sue

"Is color safe bleach as sanitary as regular bleach?"

no.

Good Lord! I agree with Susanjf. If I had thrown out every piece of clothing that was potty stained when I was raising my child, I would have gone broke buying clothes.

Not to mention every kind of creature I have raised since then. It's good to be clean, but you can go overboard if you let yourself get worked up into a frenzy over such things.

a sanitized designation for clothes washer and dish washers is avail on only a few models, mostly Bosch products. clothes washers do not sanitize unless they use steam as some new models do. dishwashers actually have to pass a certification in order to say sanitized and they have to heat the water to 180 degrees i think. unless you have a model of washer w/ a specific sanitized cycle then you can only chemically sanitize via chlorine bleach and that is iffy at best.

do those things need sanitizing IMO? No! and that comes from a microbe freak who has a specialized biology degree and taught Medical Microbiology at Indiana Univ Med. and regular Microbiology at IU. and that would be why i know sooo much about appliances that do sanitize lol! ~ liz

I often wonder how we all of my vintage survived. No anti-bacterial anything, no santitized anything - we ate mud pies, for heaven's sake! We were certainly clean but kids these days are anti-bacterialized to within an inch of their lives. Make no wonder there are so many kids who get sick with colds, etc. at the drop of a hat. We had all the antibodies we needed from all the germs we ingested or inhaled. And we had lots of fun doing it!

I think we used to wash diapers in the toilet (first rinse) then they sat in a "diaper pail" maybe in bleach I remember boiling them on the stove before washing for real but I think all that changed over the years I remember when I bought my first wringer washing mahine it wqs so great and we hung them out to dry,. The new fangled disposables sometimes left a rash. slowly the cloth ones died out and became rags.

Gosh if I tossed out all the wet bedding and waterproof pads I put on my Mom's bed I would be in the poor house. What about all the kids that wet their beds. How expensive that would be if you had to keep buying new stuff.

Every morning I would do a wash. Mule Team Borax and I became best friends. LOL I should have bought shares in that product. LOL

Anne

Minnie, I grew up in the Midwest in a big old house that had been built about 1900. In the basement laundry room, there was a squat two burner stove next to the wash tubs. It was about 2 feet tall and made with strong black iron spindly legs and big cast iron grates over two gas burners. It was for boiling diapers in the laundry room.

I am a bit of a germaphobic myself but when my kids were young I certainly didn't throw out clothes that were poopy. I simply washed them, sometimes twice and gave them an extra rinse.

The sun is nature's sanitizer. She could put them out inthe sun for a bit to get the last of the germs LOL. Of course then there might be bird poop to deal with.....

There are lots of ways to disinfect/sanitize laundry!

Lysol (liquid) is great! Just a capful per washer load.

Tea Tree Oil. Just a few drops 3-5 in a washer load. It may smell when you remove from the washer but is gone when you take things out of the dryer. Tea Tree Oil is antibacterial.

OxiClean! Hot water is all thats needed.

Peroxide I have often heard will sanitize/disinfect. I haven't tried it for that, but its great for removing blood stains in the laundry.

There is Tide with Bleach and I am not sure if it is color safe or chlorine bleach, you'd have to read it.

I remember mom doing diapers in the washer with bleach and hot water. Maybe moms are different if it's their own kids?

I've read that it's always cute when your baby son pees on you, but not as cute when grandma pees on you....
I arrived home to diarrhea on a throw rug from my dog. His tummy was upset today. No big deal, they wash up nice. GF doesnÂt need to know.

I don't know about sanitize, but it is clean enough. Laundry uses water so hot you can't put your hands in it. We have been doing it that way for years and we are still here. People used to do laundry with a wash board. You can't throw a child clothes away every time he has an accident. Anyone tells me how to do my job and I turn it over to them.

Washing your hands with warm water and soap sanitizes your hands as well as the anti bacterial hand cleaner.

Our families washed cloth diapers ... and I don't recall much about bleach ... they may have used some, but I don't think all of the time. As somone said, often first rinse in toilet, then into diaper pail and usually wash with 120 or 140 degree water about every three days.

Most of our kids survived, despite being in the presence of germs continually: I remember the saying that we had to eat a peck of dirt before we died ... and with fewer allergies than the kids have to cope with, these days.

ole joyful

That's why I used disposable diapers. More expensive, bad for the environment, but at least I din't have to deal with poopy laundry. Call me a coward or anything, it worked out for me.

Jannie, disposable diapers are great, but they've only been around for the last 40 years or so. Prior to that, we did a lot of laundry!

Read Marilyn C.'s post and put Ya Ya on it, please! LOL

I used both! I worked full time and sometimes ran out of cloth diapers, so had to use disposable for a day or two til I got a day off to do laundry.
My kids got HORRIBLE diaper rash from the disposables. Not knocking anyone who uses only disposables, but just my experience. Of course my oldest is now 32 so maybe things have changed in them? I remember my Mother often said she wished her DIL would use cloth. I remember niece and nephews had just beet red butts that had blisters and looked raw! But there again it could have just as easily been from not changing them often enough.
DGB's would get bad diaper rashes only every now and then. Their Moms used only disposables.

I'm in agreement with Barbara3.

Does that nutcase friend throw away towels and washcloths too? Rip out the carpet if a pet (or person) has an accident? More paranoia.

Laundry detergents have color safe "bleach alternatives", not chlorine bleach.

And when it comes down to it, you don't have to have hot water to sanitize dishes, but it helps. The health departments have the wash, rinse, sanitize procedure using bleach and for that matter, properly washed hands don't need hot water.

Tea tree oil is controversial. I don't recall the details but there was a strong debate about it for a while unless I'm thinking of another oil.

I've made it this long and I was raised in cloth diapers as were my siblings along with a lot of people. I do think that some people go overboard with cleaning phobias. I wonder how some of these people live. If someone coughs in the room do they evacuate and call in the sanitation crews? I would like those people to see a restaurant kitchen or two that I've experienced!

Does she use disposeable clothes? Disposeable underwear? I'm ready to ask another question or two but it might gross some people out a bit too much....

I wonder if this woman understands that there is a limited amount of water on this earth. Does she understand where it has been before it came out of her tap? We all drink water that previous generations have drunk. We drink water that dinosaurs drank, and peed, and Mother Earth recycled it.