With the change of seasons among us and the increase in illness lately, it’s never been more important to ensure your items receive a proper clean if there has been illness in your household. Getting sick is bad enough without having to spend your extra time and energy cleaning and sanitising your clothing, sheets, pillowcases, and towels. Here is a step-by-step process to make the road to recovering from your illness quicker and easier!
Separate Clothing from Bedding
The first step in disinfecting your clothes is to properly separate your loads. You want to make sure you separate your clothes and bedding while washing. You also want to separate your clothes if one has vomit or blood, so it does not mix with the other clothes in the washer. Lastly, you should separate the clothes you wore while sick and the clothes you didn’t while washing.
Wash and Dry at a High Temperature
This step is very simple. Just set your washer to a hot cycle and then dry each load on high heat. First, separate delicates and any other items that need special care. Wash the remaining items on the hottest suggested washing and drying cycles. The high temperatures will help kill the virus and remaining bacteria.
To get your delicates and special care items clean without the potential damage from heat, simply soak those items in a tub or sink basin filled with cold water and 1/2 cup colour-safe oxygen bleach powder. Let the items soak for 30-60 minutes, then wash as directed.
Add Laundry and Sanitiser
Boost the hygienic clean of your washing process to fully kill the pathogens. Dettol's Antibacterial Laundry Sanitiser is a great option that removes 99.9% of bacteria such as Staphylococcus and E. coli in the wash.
Don't Overload the Machine
When sanitising your clothes try to do it in smaller loads. The clothes need room to tumble around and fully saturate in the wash.
Disinfect Your Washer
After you have finished sanitising all your clothes and garments your washer needs a wash too. For the washer it is fairly simple: you want to set the washer temperature to high and run a quick wash cycle. Add ½ a litre of vinegar directly into the machine and let the cycle run.