Sunday, July 1, 2012

Making white clothes white



Today I am doing the laundry. We are pretty old school here - not fancy chic living. We have no hot water in our house - no hot water at the kitchen sink -- no hot water at the bathroom sink.  We DO have hot water from the shower b/c the showerhead is a water heater.

Anyway - this is all to say that washing clothes - especially whites - is less than effective. Even with bleach (lots of soaking - a load takes nearly 2 hours). I suppose I could boil water on the stove and add it to the washing maching -- but really -- how hard do you have to work!

Just trying to have clean clothes!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim,

You can buy a small "on demand" water heater called Cardal, it costs around 100 Reais, 50 dollars.
Have a plumber/electrician install it for you right behind your washer, voila!! Hot water and white clothes white easier!!
And I am sure you can find a Cardal heater in Niteroi!!!! :)


Abracos
Ray

Andrew Francis said...

Jim, I hope you don't mind if I'm practical about your "complaint" and point out that most of the country washes clothes only with cold water. Therefore it must be possible to have clothes as white as everyone else. Try speaking to your local friends and neighbors and see what they do (and how white their clothes are).

Maybe there's a better brand of soap. Maybe the fabric of your clothes isn't very good for cold washing. If soaking helps, why don't you leave it overnight? If everything else fails, maybe you need to lower your expectations. :(

Jim said...

Andrew - I have taken to soaking things for many more hours. Getting bed sheets clean (free of body oils) has been a challenge.

Towels and white cloths have been an uphill climb.

I'm getting there...

Jey said...

Hi, Jim. Love the blog! Im in Vitoria and we had the same problem. I just stopped buying white clothes, demoted the few white towels we had to floor rags and all bras and undercrackers are now black or dark. Stress free livin'!

Do you have a clothes brush to wash by hand? Its kind of a pain but Ive found that soaking in bleach followed by a brisk hand brushing wih Omo does the trick even in cold water. If you do a good enough job hand washing/rinsing its much quicker than waitig for the 2 hour wash: Good luck!

- Jey