Re: How do you get STAINS out of the clothes?

A product that has been around for more than fifty years, and is nontoxic, I believe, is called Kleen-Glo...and is a light paste that lasts for ages. It has been the staple cleaner, for everything in our home, since the get-go.

If you would once use a tiny smear on a cloth to clean the bathtub/bathroom, you would not be without it ever again. And it is mild and fresh-smelling. It says it can be used for laundry, too, though I haven't tried it much.

The way I see it, if Kleen-Glo makes short work of bathtub grunge, it will clean the grubbiest jeans and shirts to a sparkle in a flash, and without hot water.

That's my complaint...that the one washer we could buy which had a HOT setting, comes preset from the manufacturer to use very little hot water...the volume control on the HOT setting is set down low.

Even if you have a hot water tank that will give very hot water (which we do in this old house), it takes forever to fill the tub. Makes me so darn mad!

Very hot water is how our ancestors got their clothes clean, that and scrubbing on a washboard. They even heated the washwater in a big iron pot over an outdoor fire...and used lye soap...terrible on the hands.

Today's clothes couldn't take it. We'd have to go back to sturdy cottons and linen (flax fibers, and pure luxury).

Set on 'warm', today's washers will eventually turn everything gray. That's why the big soapers change their formulas regularly. So you and I won't complain about gray clothes.

For a long, long time we have used Watkins Organic Cleaner (liquid, and no more than 1/4 cup..it's super concentrated, but mild)...usually with a little Oxi Clean in loads like bedsheets, etc.

And we prespot. One drop of the Organic Cleaner, vigorously rubbed into, say, a grease spot on the front of a T-shirt, before machine-washing, does the trick. I have even done it on all the grubby areas on work jeans..perhaps once or twice annually.

It also helps to get at spots early, even before they have dried, if possible...and to know what works on unusual substances. Blood, for example, takes a salt soak, before the original stain dries, I believe. (See the how-to books in your library.)

Sorting ones clothes by fabric, light and dark colors, and general grubbiness, is another help...as is NOT loading too heavily. Clothes need to circulate freely in plenty of water in the washer.

That's the gist of what I know, other than washing in a running stream, and slapping the clothes on a convenient big rock.

Don't laugh, that's how soldiers' shirts were washed in foreign countries...and why the army issued them with metal buttons. Bone buttons kept breaking with the slapping.

All of this sounds like a lot of bother...but I come from an era when laundry, fresh and sweet-smelling from the clothesline was a great satisfaction to the homemaker, and her family. Kids never forget.

(Sunshine is a great sterilizer, and perhaps whitener...and some say freezing whitens, but I think that depends on the cloth. Besides, there isn't enough room in there.)

(Policemen of the Bahamas take great pride in their starched, crackling white jackets, buttoned up like armour. I think they should get medals for the excellence of their laundry, and their endurance. I wonder how many rookies have passed out in that moist heat, from the jackets alone.)

One lady I know took great pride in having her laundry on the line at 6 a.m. Monday morning...competing against a particularly obnoxious neighbor.

Oh yes, life was quite different once upon a time.

Enjoy!