Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cleaning and bleach

Suggest kitchen cleaning products

grouse — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:53:11 -0800

Please suggest products that I should and should not use to clean different parts of the kitchen, such as a laminate counter top, stainless steel sink, or metal stove top. I am particularly interested in products that won't generate fumes that will send me out of the kitchen. I usually use Clorox Clean-Up on the counter, but the bleach fumes are such that I can't really hang out in the kitchen afterwards. I'd really like something that I could use while I am watching something on the stove and have a couple of free minutes. I'm not opposed to using something fume-generating as well after I'm done cooking if it will do a better job.

I know not to mix ammonia and bleach.

I would also appreciate general kitchen cleaning tips.

Drippy, icky bathroom fun!

fillsthepews — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:31:26 -0800

Mold and bleach? How much to kill it, but not me? (And I guess not my roommate, too.) I've got some seriously moldy bathroom walls. This is a rental home, and I'm looking quite forward to moving out of it in the fall.

I'm looking for an easy, inexpensive solution to getting the mold off. Past askmetafilter questions say to wash the walls with bleach (straight?) or a bleach solution. Well... color me ignorant, but is it safe to simply spray the walls w/ bleach? If I need to make a solution, is there a standard bleach/water recipe?

Basically, this bathroom hardly ever dries. So, if the wall hardly ever dries, I have concerns about the walls being bleach and stinky the next time I take a shower after I clean it - possibly to an unhealthy, annoying level. Not to mention brushing against the wall with fabric and ruining it.

Am I being paranoid? I feel like a total cleaning n00b.

Bleach replacement?

birdlady — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:44:36 -0800

Is there a substitute for bleach? I am neurotic and don't feel like things (showers, floors, sheets) have been sanitized if I don't use bleach, but bleach bothers my asthma. What can I use that will satisfy both my health and OCD issues?

How could I make the same (cleaning) mistake twice?

Ookseer — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:29:39 -0800

How do I get rid of the brown stain that bleach left on my old porcelain tub? I can't believe I did this again. In my old place one of the first things I did was use bleach on my old (1940's) porcelain tub. And it left an almost impossible nasty brown stain.

Years later, new place, different old porcelain tub... and I got a little aggressive with the spring cleaning, used a bleach based cleaner near it, and have the brown stain again.

Looking for personal experience on what has successfully removed (or significantly diminished) these brown bleach stains for you. Last time I followed the advice of paper towels soaked in CLR which ended up etching the tub. Something I'd like to avoid.

Vinegar - tasty condiment or household disinfectant?

catfood — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:34:55 -0800

Is vinegar really effective as a household cleaner? A number of people have suggested to me to use vinegar instead of bleach in my household cleaning, stating that it's just as effective as killing germs & bacteria and leaving things nice and clean, without being as toxic as bleach.

I do use vinegar to de-stink things (the dishwasher, coffeepot, etc), but I'm not sold on the fact that it's a disinfectant. Maybe my Google-Fu is off, but I can't find any information about it except from "Frugal Living" sites, and their primary goal seems to be more to save a buck than to clean your raw-chicken-slimed kitchen counters or toilet bowls.

Anyone have any evidence? Or suggestions for other less-toxic household cleaners?

Getting stains out of a white formica kitchen counter

CunningLinguist — Thu, 12 May 2005 05:30:51 -0800

Have I hopelessly stained my white formica kitchen counter? After some recent debauchery, there were some stains on my counter the morning after. Not sure what: could be red wine, could be coffee, could be raspberry juice. I wasn't worried in the least because a little Soft Scrub with bleach always took care of such problems instantly in the past. But not this time. When it didn't, I thought, "hmm, well, maybe more bleach" so I poured a flood of straight bleach on the stains, covered them with a damp paper towel and went away. When I got back, to my horror, the stains have now become much more prominent and have turned a hideous, bright Halloween-y orange. No amount of scrubbing even begins to minimize them. What the hell did I do? And is there any way to fix this?

Smelly Watchband

willpie — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:20:06 -0800

My watchband is starting to stink. This happens to all of my watches. I've tried many, many things including soaking them in bleach (I usually only wear metal-banded watches. Largely because they last longer before stinking). Nothing has managed to stop the stinking. I like this watch. What can I do?