How to Sanitize Your Laundry

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I am so excited to be one of fifty Whirlpool Moms featured in featured in a test-drive program. During the next two months, I’ll be testing the Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer and sharing my experiences with you.

Did you know that your laundry could be making you sick?

This is some disgusting stuff, especially for those of us who regularly run poop from cloth diapers through our washing machines.

Even if you don’t use cloth diapers, what do you do when your family has the flu or a bad cold? What do you do if someone gets head lice or if a pet gets fleas?

You have to sanitize your laundry, that’s what.

I channeled my inner graduate school nerd so that I could give you a mini research paper on sanitizing your laundry. I’ve included sources in case you’d like to read more about any of the points.

The problem is that few people are consistently wash clothes in hot water or using bleach. We’re environmentally conscious, after all!

Unfortunately, bacteria (like salmonella and eColi), viruses (like hepatitis A), and allergens (like pet hair and dust mites) can survive a cold water wash without bleach. It turns out that they’re much more common in laundry than any of us would like to think. (source: 1999 article from the New York Times)

How to Sanitize Your Laundry

1. Get a washer with a sanitize cycle. You might have already guessed that my first suggestion would be to buy a washing machine that includes a sanitize cycle, like the Whirlpool Duet washer. In order to earn its NSF mark, the Whirlpool Duet washer reduces microorganisms (that’s the fancy term for all of the stuff I mentioned above, bacteria, viruses, and allergens) by 99.9% and prevents them from transferring from one load to another. After using the allergen cycle (or the sanitize temperature setting on other cycles), you can be sure that your laundry is free of germs. That peace of mind is worth a new washer, don’t you think? (source: NSF website)
2. Rinse twice. It’s not great for the environment, but a second rinse significantly reduces allergens. I didn’t find any research that showed an extra rinse gets rid of bacteria or viruses, though. (source: ABC News)
3. Use hot water. According to the articles above, temperatures of 140 F are required to kill allergens and germs. Setting your hot water tank at 140 F, however, is dangerous, especially if you have small children. I can tell you from personal experience that 140 F is hot, hot enough to burn you instantly, hot enough to make your skin scream out in pain on contact. You have to way the hot water danger potential against the germ potential here, unless your washing machine has an internal heater like my Whirlpool Duet does.
   Before the Duet, we had to set our hot water tank up to 140 F for a few days to get some funk out of our cloth diapers. I burned myself more than once in those few days. Fortunately, now I can use the sanitize temperature setting to get the water that hot within the washing machine.
4. Add a disinfectant. Products containing chlorine (bleach), pine oil (Pine-sol), or phenolic (Lysol) should have the word disinfectant on the label, and can be used to disinfect or sanitize laundry. The problem is that they can have unpleasant smells and cause color changes. You would need to put some of the disinfectant on a cotton swab and test it on an area of the fabric that won’t be seen to see if it’s okay to use. (source: University of Illinois Extension and Clorox Dr. Laundry blog)

I wrote this review while participating in a test-drive campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Whirlpool and received a complimentary Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer to facilitate my review.

Photo source

© 2011, Tara Ziegmont. All rights reserved.

Tagged as: germs, Laundry, whirlpoolmoms

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