Domestic Cleaning In Chelsea - Eco-Friendly Laundry Alternatives To Chlorine Bleach

Posted on 12/03/2014

Best Eco-friendly Laundry Products

Chlorine bleach is awful because it consists of things that can harm your living space. While many rate bleach as a heavy-duty disinfectant, we mustn't lose sight of what it's also doing to your home in Chelsea.

A bit of background in how chlorine bleach sends out toxins is useful prior to our discussion of alternative methods. First of all, whenever applied in consistent room temperature, it actually becomes a gas in which people breathe in, even with windows open nearby. When it becomes especially gaseous, chlorine bleach creates dioxins, which are known to contribute directly to cancer, and are similarly culpable across physical shortcomings as diverse as birth defects, diabetes, infertility and immune system malfunctioning.   

Perhaps most concerning in our immediate lives however is the impact chlorine bleach has on our skin, lungs and eyes, particularly if the person using it fails to wash their hands thoroughly after application. Walking in bare feet over a floor freshly mopped with bleach is a common problem for occupants who later wonder why their feet are so itchy.

We could go on for hours here listing all the ways bleach will compromise your health and well-being, so let's just leave it here after quickly mentioning a worrying statistic - just under 30% of all domestic cleaning accidents are related to bleach. Alarming yeah? If you think so, don't use it at all. Instead, refer to these completely safe, and entirely eco-friendly alternatives to use in your home in Chelsea, SW3:

1 - Use baking soda as an additive to laundry detergent

Simply add half a cup of baking soda to your regular laundry detergent. This will increase your detergent's capacity to break up bacteria and stains while making your fabrics brighter.

2 - Pre-clean white fabrics in diluted vinegar

Get a spare plastic bottle and place a cap-full of vinegar into it, followed by 6 cap-fulls of warm water. Shake up your new solution before letting it sit overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Add more in compliance with this proportion ratio if you wish. The water dilution helps suppress the vinegar odour without compromising on the potency of vinegar as a cleaning agent. Use your diluted vinegar mix to pre-soak white materials.

3 - Use oxygen based bleach

Oxygen based bleaches are catching on as a suitable alternative to bleach. Gentler on the environment and on you, they are okay to use in your home in the SW3 if you absolutely have to. To achieve the best results, with water and pre-soak the night before you wash those delicate fabrics. 

4 - Use hydrogen peroxide

When it comes to home cleaning, hydrogen peroxide is useful since it's a mild bleaching agent. Although it might not occur to you, there's likely some already sitting in your home's medicine cabinet. If so, retrieve it and use on whites by adding a cup to your full load. Refrain from using hydrogen peroxide on coloured-clothing however.

5 - Use the sun

Solar power is the most powerful thing on Earth technically speaking. Although not physically located on our planet, the sun's ubiquity and penetrative capacity is so immense and restorative that we should never underestimate how it can aid the health of our fabrics. Don't use your dryer to dry those whites whenever the sun is knocking about. Instead, go for that near-zero carbon footprint option and brighten white fabrics with some trusted ultra-violet ray exposure. Don't hang colours out to dry in the sun however as they will fade a lot due to the sun's sheer strength.    

So there you have it - 5 easy ways to clean without chlorine bleach in your home in Chelsea. You most probably have everything at hand already too, so make a start and see results sooner rather than later.