bleach and water, oh my gosh!

[bethie_alane]

okay, i must be really dorky, and i'm not even quite 25 yet but me and my boyfriend are turning into boring people.... but this was my excitement and discovery from last weekend, we really must get out more often... we go through phases where we go out tons and bar hop with our friends and then go through phases where we stay in for months in a row.......

this past saturday i put some bleach and water in a spare spray bottle and miraculously all the gross mildew from our bathroom ceiling and walls (we don't have an exhaust fan) simply vanished... it looks like a whole new room!

he even said that most people use bleach and water to clean everything like kitchen counters, toilets, bathroom/shower tiles/grout, etc...

do any of y'all do that? i don't know... does bleach + water have the same effects and perks as lysol all purpose cleaner such as killing germs and such? bleach + water is sooo cheap but i've been so used to using lysol all purpose cleaner to clean kitchen sinks, body of the toilet (use lysol toilet bowl cleaner for the inside) and other bathroom fixtures that using bleach + water for all of that seems strange and foreign and maybe not as effective....

anybody just use bleach + water as an all purpose cleaner and don't buy anything else at all?????????????????

bethie

[jjhmom]

I am a firm believer in the power of bleach! It kills just abut every germ that you can think of!! I think that your use of it on all surfaces of the kitchen/bathroom are perfectly acceptable in the cleaning world. I do like the "scented" cleaners and am sometimes impartial to Lysol (the pine stuff-"Rain Clean"), but bleach does the job too!! Just be careful of course to not get it on to fabrics.

[KAMA]

and i don't know if it's true or not, but when AIDS first became the topic of conversation it was mentioned that an immediate wipe with clorox on say a cut that was exposed to contaminated blood would kill the germs that cause the virus.

[BuckeyeGirl]

I've used bleach as a cleaner/disinfectant for years....it's great!! My brother owns a restaurant and they even add a drop of bleach to the water they wash vegetables in (of course they rinse it really well!) I also use a few drops in the dishwasher and sink. Just be careful not to get it on anything porous, like fabric or carpeting.

For items that are not bleach-safe, I use either vinegar, baking soda or ammonia.....all super-cheap and effective cleaners!


And KAMA's right....it does kill the HIV virus, as well as staph germs and a host of other yucky germs.

Here is a link from Frugal Living about cheap cleaners:

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[eaparham]

Never ever combine bleach and ammonia when cleaning. Your floor will be super clean, but you may be dead on your clean floor. My dear sweet mother (who should have known better) did her floors like that, and it really burned up the tissues in her nose and throat. It was like a real bad case of laryngitis and whooping cough for weeks.

[freesurfer]

Is there like a certain mixture to this then? Like one part water, one part bleach?

[devlina2u]

I remember Toby had told me 1:1 ratio of water and bleach does the trick....I didn't try it yet.....I should

[bethie_alane]

Originally posted by freesurfer
Is there like a certain mixture to this then? Like one part water, one part bleach?

i thought it was a 3:1 ratio...

like 1 cup bleach for every 3 cups water.....

that's what i've been doing for my bathroom and the results are AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the bleach solution i sprayed on months ago to get all the nasty mildew off our bathroom walls hasn't even tried to come back!!!!! bleach + H20 is definantly better than like tilex or store brand mildrew or soap scum remover who i think "clean" more than "disinfect + kill" you know what i mean?

bethie

[lauseng]

I was told once to be very careful using bleach to clean porcelain surfaces. According to a tub resurfacer, bleach can slowly eat away at the porcelain, creating a rougher surface that can actually trap dirt and gross stuff.

I haven't found any support for this, but I wanted to share.

Jackie

[bbouma]

Thank you for the information... I used the 3:1 mixture in our bathroom. We also don't have a fan in the bathroom, and had mildew building up. I had bought some tilex to clean it, but when I read your info, I took that back and bought a spray bottle for the bleach mixture. Worked like a charm! Thank you!

[domesticengineer]

Originally posted by lauseng
I was told once to be very careful using bleach to clean porcelain surfaces. According to a tub resurfacer, bleach can slowly eat away at the porcelain, creating a rougher surface that can actually trap dirt and gross stuff.

I haven't found any support for this, but I wanted to share.

Jackie

I can support that fact Jackie... In my early days of housekeeping I left "tilex" (basically bleach itself) sit on the tub for an hour or so. That is a NO NO. It ate away some of the porcelain leaving a rust like color in some spots. Bleach when used on porcelain should always be rinsed right away. I do use bleach for a lot of things but you have got to be careful. It IS the one of the true things that will kill mildew.