There’s probably a bottle of Clorox® Regular-Bleach sitting in your laundry room right now. We’ve all got one; I think they must come standard when you buy a home. Maybe your bottle is covered in a layer of dust because you only grab it for the occasional laundry load. That’s okay, I get it, you are probably a lot like my wife in thinking Clorox bleach makes undies pearly white and that’s it. We’ll work through this together – honey, you paying attention?
Clorox Bleach has EPA registration to certify that it disinfects so while bleaching your tidy whiteys is the classic and most obvious use, there’s a ton more power trapped inside that bottle – it’s a bottle to battle cold & flu season. You need to blow the dust off and brush away the cobwebs because Clorox Bleach will disinfect your hard surfaces, effectively killing germs and keeping everyone in your house that much healthier during cold & flu season and all year ‘round. Only EPA registered disinfectants can make claims about what germs they actually kill, and Clorox Bleach kills 99.9% of germs and bacteria. By contrast, cleaning with vinegar typically only kills about 82% of germs. Not to get all ‘mathy’ on you, but 99.9 is a lot more than 82.
My house is clean but it’s not ‘clean’ clean so I recently spoke with Mary Gagliardi, Clorox’s Dr. Laundry, to get some tips as we enter cold & flu season and to help you (and my wife) understand why Clorox Bleach is simple to use as well as extremely effective. She advised that I first wipe away any surface debris (like, make the spilled turkey gravy, pumpkin pie crumbs and warm apple cider puddles my 9-year-old left in her wake go away first) then come back with a Clorox Bleach disinfecting solution. You just mix ½ cup of Clorox Bleach with one gallon of water to clean and disinfect a variety of surfaces. I need to give that just 5-minutes of contact time to work its magic before rinsing with clean water and drying off with a towel. Boom! That’s it. That surface is now clean AND disinfected.
While the recommended Clorox Bleach solution is that simple ½ cup bleach + one gallon of water formula, you might not need that much solution. I’m totally feeling you, it’s cool. Instead, try this: 2 tbsp of bleach + quart of water in a spray bottle. If you are a little worried about accidently kicking over a bucket with a larger amount of solution, this contained approach might work better for you as you clean the kitchen, bathroom, doorknobs and other surfaces frequently touched by your kids who so kindly brought home every single germ imaginable from school.
Dr. Laundry helped me show my amazing wife that Clorox Bleach is not only great for keeping undershirts and underwear brilliantly white, but cleaning with it is the most versatile way to keep our house free of germs during cold & flu season and all year long, and that when we’re mindful, Clorox Bleach is absolutely safe and easy to use.
If you’ve got a cleaning question or concern of your own, you can ask Dr. Laundry too! She loves getting comments and questions to help people with their laundry and cleaning questions. Email her at: Dr.laundry@clorox.com.
OWTK is a Clorox CLXChampion receiving financial compensation for this and other stories. All opinions expressed above are honest and unbiased, as always, there really are pumpkin pie crumbs and apple juice spills in my kitchen more often than I care to admit.
