Please tell me you knew/remember a "bleach sink"

[Bang!Zoom!]

Do any of you guys keep a bleach bath in the kitchen to soak stuff in during the summer?

 

Absolutely everyone in my family did, friends moms did - I thought it was super common to do this? You just keep a tub of lightly bleached water handy and use it throughout the day to cut down on germs in the house...and keep a dishtowel off to the side to air dry stuff on.

 

Yesterday, I was doing a sink and realized I didn't have my plastic dishtub anymore, and I mentioned I was going to need another from the store....and got the side eye for it.

 

Seems I remember this was par for the course, and many people kept the wash tub sink just outside the door/garage/breezeway kept up like this too.

 

Is it a regional thing only?

[nukeswife]

never heard of it. I grew up in the midwest (WI, near Milwaukee)

[Tap]

Never heard of it. I do remember my mother keeping a hot/warm pan of dish water going most of the day to keep dishes washed up. I remember her boiling water and tossing it in the cooled off water (to warm it up) so she wouldn't have to waste soap by starting over constantly. I recall items other than dishes going through the water so maybe it is similar to what you are thinking of. It wasn't uncommon for my mom to put a slash of bleach into her rinse water.

Edited May 15, 2012 by Tap, tap, tap

[edelweiss]

I've definitely never heard of that.

[*********]

Nope, never heard of it. I grew up in MI, where I still live.

[KristinaBreece]

Nope. Maybe it's regional. I'm from Ohio. I would say maybe it's because I'm 26... but we lived with my grandmother most of the time, and she didn't do that either.

[elegantlion]

Grew up in the mid-west, nope never heard of it.

[Annie]

never heard of it. I grew up in the midwest (WI, near Milwaukee)

 

This. But grew up in Milwaukee. :)

 

ETA: what type of stuff do you wash in it?

[Acorn]

Never heard of it. I would think it would be dangerous to leave around kids and pets.

[gardening momma]

I've never heard of it, but I do use a bit of bleach in my dishwater if I'm washing dishes from something that went moldy in the fridge.

[mommymilkies]

I grew up in the Midwest and briefly lived in NY. Never heard of it!

[regentrude]

Never heard of it. And it would not occur to me to use bleach at all.

[Kathryn]

Uh, no. What on earth do you need to bleach all day long?

 

ETA: I'm from SC,but my mom is from New England, and her mom from Kansas. None of us have ever done this.

[gardening momma]

Never heard of it. I would think it would be dangerous to leave around kids and pets.

That would really depend on your kids and pets. My kids don't get into the dishwater. If I had a separate tub of bleach water that I didn't keep in the sink, it would still be up on a counter. When we had cats, they didn't get into our sinks. We did have one instance when dh was cleaning the jacuzzi tub at our previous house, and he had it about 1/3 full of bleach water. One of our cats jumped in--he couldn't see before he jumped that it had water in it. We rarely used the tub, so it was usually dry. The cat jumped back out and raced away. We called the vet and said the cat would be fine, just give him a rinse in a plain water bath. Which we did. And he didn't like. :lol:

[Bang!Zoom!]

Well, maybe it is a weird pocket area thing?

 

It's just a really bland solution of bleach water, like a cupful to a dishpan of water. It just gets used all day long for wiping up the kitchen, or dumping junk in that comes into the house from outside.

 

We always soaked our dishes in it if they were hand washed. We cleaned various brushes that way also. (Works awesome on hair brushes that if they are shared, nail brushes, that sort of thing.)

 

I wonder if it had something to do with the hard water now? Or large busy families? I'd *get* it if it were only the house I grew up in, but everybody did this....

 

We left for the weekend, and I didn't clear the counters before we left, so I was redoing them before I could put dinner on when the conversation came up.

 

Wintertime not so much, but summer, it was like a household right thing...that's why I was thinking it was to do with ick and crusty control my whole life. I'm surprised.

[dirty ethel rackham]

Never heard of it and my mom was a clean freak.

[LaxMom]

Never heard of it, either. Grew up in Maine.

[mom2scouts]

I've never heard of it. I grew up in Ohio.

[Baseball mom]

Use to do it at the convience store I worked out. All of that days dish/cleaning rags were kept in the bucket of bleach water (just a little bit of bleach) until needed.

 

Actually I have considered doing this at home too.

[Ellie]

Do any of you guys keep a bleach bath in the kitchen to soak stuff in during the summer?

 

Absolutely everyone in my family did, friends moms did - I thought it was super common to do this? You just keep a tub of lightly bleached water handy and use it throughout the day to cut down on germs in the house...and keep a dishtowel off to the side to air dry stuff on.

 

Yesterday, I was doing a sink and realized I didn't have my plastic dishtub anymore, and I mentioned I was going to need another from the store....and got the side eye for it.

 

Seems I remember this was par for the course, and many people kept the wash tub sink just outside the door/garage/breezeway kept up like this too.

 

Is it a regional thing only?

:blink:

:001_huh:

 

Never heard of such a thing.

 

When I was trained for camping as a Camp Fire leader, I was taught to add bleach in the rinse water when we were camping, because all the campers came from different families and different sets of germs, KWIM? But I have never heard of people doing that in their own homes.

[Bang!Zoom!]

I'm going to have to call my sister and ask her why she thinks everyone kept them up like that. It's just a habit for me now.

 

My best guess is mold control during the humid season, along with higher chance of summer viruses in food prep. I don't think too much about the mold issue here, it's very dry, but the food & dishes stuff, ya - I try to keep a close eye on it.

[KatieJ]

Nope, never heard of that.

[lailasmum]

I have never heard of it at home. A cafe I used to work in had a bleach in a bucket of water for all the wiping cloths to go in between uses. I have seen someone add bleach to their dish washing water but they have a real fear of germs and are a bit too clean in my opinion. We rarely use bleach in this house.

[Spy Car]

Chlorine is pretty toxic, so all this bleach strikes me as a very bad idea.

 

A great (better than bleach) disinfectant that is non-toxic is spraying with a combination of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide (kept in separate spray bottles). The peroxide needs to be in a separate opaque bottle (light cause it to break down) but the traditional brown bottles peroxide comes in usually take a regular sized spray top.

 

Save the bleach for when there is no other alternative.

 

Bill

[elise1mds]

Nope, not here. I'm from KS/OK. My grandmother does the water in the kitchen sink all day thing, though.

[VeganCupcake]

:blink:

:001_huh:

 

Never heard of such a thing.

 

When I was trained for camping as a Camp Fire leader, I was taught to add bleach in the rinse water when we were camping, because all the campers came from different families and different sets of germs, KWIM? But I have never heard of people doing that in their own homes.

 

:iagree: When I was a Girl Guide in the 80s in Canada, we did a final rinse of our dishes in a bleach and water solution on camp outs. But we never did it at home. My mom almost never used bleach for anything.

[Unicorn.]

TX, and no. I know the schools used bleach water to rinse dishes when I was growing up, but nobody I know had a bleach sink. And why only in the summer? I do wish I had a vegetable sink though! And a Laundry sink in the utility room!

[JenC3]

Nope. Indiana here. But we did have a sink full of dish water for soaking and I do use bleach once a month to clean my white porcelain sink. I also use a water bleach mixture in a spray bottle once a day for spraying my butcher block island.

[Bang!Zoom!]

I remember when the big river nearby would "bloom", we had to be extra cautious. Did any of you guys grow up by water that did that?

 

We'd get yelled at if we were caught with our hands by our mouths or face, that's a definite memory.

 

Algae blooms can make a person really sick. This is the time of year those can happen. We couldn't fish or swim or have anything to do with ponds or the river when those came up.

[Sandragood1]

My mother was a clean freak and didn't do this in the U S.

When in Liberia, she boiled all drinking and dish washing water and briefly soaked produce in a weak bleach solution.

 

When I was in Girl Scouts, we used a weak bleach solution as a final rinse when camping.

 

Our family is west Texas (water?) and Virginia.

 

Sandra

[MariannNOVA]

Chlorine is pretty toxic, so all this bleach strikes me as a very bad idea.

 

A great (better than bleach) disinfectant that is non-toxic is spraying with a combination of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide (kept in separate spray bottles). The peroxide needs to be in a separate opaque bottle (light cause it to break down) but the traditional brown bottles peroxide comes in usually take a regular sized spray top.

 

Save the bleach for when there is no other alternative.

 

Bill

 

Agree - my MCS dd and her dh clean with wv and hp and steam.

 

My mom can 'hear' dirt - she is the original clean freak and we never did a bleach sink -- never heard of it till here.

 

Sounds like a regional thing...very 'Lassie'-like -- very homey and comfy.:)

[SwallowTail]

I grew up in various states in the south, am over 40, and have never heard of this practice.

[hana]

I grew up in Maine. We didn't do that, but I know a friend's grandmother did. Of course, I thought if you stood still too long in her house, you'd get bleached, too.

[Kathryn]

Chlorine is pretty toxic, so all this bleach strikes me as a very bad idea.

 

A great (better than bleach) disinfectant that is non-toxic is spraying with a combination of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide (kept in separate spray bottles). The peroxide needs to be in a separate opaque bottle (light cause it to break down) but the traditional brown bottles peroxide comes in usually take a regular sized spray top.

 

Save the bleach for when there is no other alternative.

 

Bill

 

:iagree:

 

OP where are you from?

[ondreeuh]

As a teen I worked in an ice cream shop, and the owner had us keep a sink full of bleach water to make it easy to wipe counters. That's the closest thing I can think of.

 

We don't have a dishwasher, so I keep a washtub in one side of my double sink. As we use dishes, they get rinsed and then soak in soapy water in the tub until there's enough of them to do a quick wash (this way we only have to wash dishes 2-3 times a day). Soaking keeps food from drying on the dishes or getting gross, and washing takes seconds with a dish brush and a little extra soap.

[Bang!Zoom!]

Grew up in MI. I saw this in the Northern MI area, on the East coast, in the center of the state, West side, and my stomping grounds of Central MI which is a Superfund site.

 

Now I'm wondering if it was a generational thing with Mom's born in the 20's and late 30's. Bleach was cheap and plentiful, so maybe socioeconomic too?

 

It can't be cultural, too many people say they'd never heard of it, and our neighborhoods were mixed backgrounds.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I lived with an older woman when I was in seminary (she died a few years ago at age 100). She bleached her dishclothes every day after use. And she would soak and then wash all her dish towels etc. in a bleach solution. She didn't always have a bleach sink though.

 

Was your water from a well back then? Perhaps the well water would get algae and other stuff growing in it from the summer's heat and people used the bleach as a health and safety measure?

[laundrycrisis]

I don't regularly keep a sink of bleach water, but I will occasionally fill one side with hot water and a few sprays of Clorox Cleanup. When we use a cutting board for raw meat, the board and knife go straight into that sink afterward.

[mo2]

No, not in a home, but I worked in 2 different restaurants, and the rags we used to wipe tables and counters were always kept soaking in a bucket of bleach water. Now, living on a farm, I only keep bleach around to clean up after the rare mouse that gets in (not usually a problem, but occasionally happens). I prefer vinegar for everything else.

[Bang!Zoom!]

Ya, there was a lot of well water back then. Lot of poverty on my Mother's side of the family. Interestingly enough, she was brought up in a convent as well.

 

We used to have a hand pump that you'd have to prime, anyone remember how to prime a hand pump? Ha. Outhouses, the whole shebang.

 

I remember when we got city water.

 

My home neighborhood though, this was common up and down the street and all the roaming areas we had, but we had a lot of ponds and slow rivers also, and swamps, and a mine shaft ran through the woods. There was a very large brine well complex also.

 

Even after we got city water, we had to let the tap run a bit before it was okay to use for the first use of the day. Maybe it was a combination of factors and just good common sense in that area for that reason.

 

When we'd stay at my Grandmothers, relatives would come to visit and "fill up their jugs", which were just gallon sized milk jugs. They would fill them with water. Those always were soaked and dried also, and we were always reusing jars and containers from the stores as well as canning. Plastic was rather coveted in my early childhood memories.

[KatieJ]

Ya, there was a lot of well water back then.

We used to have a hand pump that you'd have to prime, anyone remember how to prime a hand pump? Ha. Outhouses, the whole shebang.

 

I remember when we got city water.

 

 

QUOTE]

 

I grew up with well water, and we didn't bleach, but we did have indoor plumbing.

 

However, I Just wanted to say, yes, I do remember priming the pump!

We had a cabin on a lake and there was nothing but the pump and the outhouse until I was 16. We ( my Dad and siblings) tore down a farm house and then Dad built our real cabin with that lumbar which included indoor plumbing!

 

Miss that place.

[blondeviolin]

Huh. This is interesting to me. My mom does it. I was always under the impression that it was to clean her dishrags, but she does let them soak in the sink with a light amount of bleach (a capful or so to an entire sinkful). I don't do the bleach sink thing, but I do wash my dish towels/rags in bleach every so often or they start to smell funky.

 

OP, I guess you're not the only one raised weirdly!

[msk]

I've heard of and experienced it. A camp cook used it on an extended group camping trip I was on, although she tied it to high rodent activity and group living rather than summer weather.

 

That was the summer I discovered that if I eat off of bleached-and-air-dried dishes regularly, I get REALLY sick. As in, frequent near-uncontrollable bathroom trips, internal bleeding sick, day after day. Apparently my insides cannot handle the bleach residue this method was leaving behind. Our cook was reluctant to believe this, but when we took the bleach sink away, I got well within 24 hours. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of the bleach sink!

[PollyOR]

Never heard of it...from FL.

 

My grandmother (and my mom) always kept a small pan/container of dishwater in the sink.

 

I don't worry too much about germs around the house. After taking a microbiology course in college, I realized that germs are everywhere. It's impossible to rid my environment of them. We do basic hygiene and housekeeping but we don't fret over germs unless someone is vomiting :D.

[KidsHappen]

I have never heard of it but I do occassionally soak all of my dishcloths in a weak bleach solution before running them through the wash. Otherwise, they get a mildewy smell even when washed with other towels. Maybe because they sit around wet longer than towels do?

[xixstar]

Only dealt with this when working in a child care center with infants and toddlers. The bleach is very very diluted and it doesn't really even have a smell and my nose is sensitive. But we'd toss anything that had been chewed on during the day in there and then the items would be rinsed and dried.

 

Also seen it used in group camping for washing dishes as well. There is the bucket for rinsing and then a second diluted bleach solution for a second rinse. I don't wash my dishes using a rinse bucket so the entire process seemed strange to me - I have to use running water to rinse or I feel like I'm just dunking things in dirty germy soapy water.

[MamaT]

Never heard of it. Spent most of my life in North Florida, and the last 10 in NC.

 

My mom was born in the 30's and grew up very poor, too. She was number 10 of 11 kids. I remember the outhouse at my grandmother's when I was a child, and they lived on water - some type of lagoon.

[tex-mex]

 

I don't worry too much about germs around the house. After taking a microbiology course in college, I realized that germs are everywhere. It's impossible to rid my environment of them. We do basic hygiene and housekeeping but we don't fret over germs unless someone is vomiting :D.

:iagree:

 

Son and I have a rare liver disease that a cold or flu might put us in the hospital. Only if one of us is ill do we follow our "Sick Day Protocol" with isolating the ill person in a room away from the rest of the family. I make sure to sanitize everything like remote controls, bathrooms, sink handles, refrigerator handle, light switch, etc. But only if we are sick.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

OP: I have never heard of this before. However, that being said, I met a lady who was born and raised in Louisiana. She struck me as being very germ-phobic or OCD and I was surprised to see a bottle of Lysol at her sink. After being friends with her for 3+ years, I saw her on many occasions Lysol all cups and utensils before running them in the dishwasher. That struck me as odd.

 

She would sanitize her sandals with antibacterial wipes after wearing them for an errand, for example. I know she would make sure the city's trash container was washed inside and out with hot water and soap. She never ate leftovers, but if she brought home a doggie bag from a restaurant, it went into the trash can immediately. She never drank tap water but always drank bottled water. She would go thru a case in days. Years ago, I told her that the BPA in those plastic bottled water was not that great. She should use a reverse osmosis system or buy a Brita. She didn't believe me. Now years later, I am sure she is horrified to think she drank from plastic bottles. LOL :lol:

 

But then her kids had quirks too when we were out and about: refusing to use public restrooms, not wanting to use communal items like flavored syrup (dispensers) for snowcones at a MLB baseball game. The vendor had an "A" public health certificate on his stall too. But the kid said he knew the dispenser was full of germs. Odd thing was when they came to my house, they ate and drank from my stuff without germy comments. Confusing. :confused:

[gardening momma]

That was the summer I discovered that if I eat off of bleached-and-air-dried dishes regularly, I get REALLY sick. As in, frequent near-uncontrollable bathroom trips, internal bleeding sick, day after day. Apparently my insides cannot handle the bleach residue this method was leaving behind. Our cook was reluctant to believe this, but when we took the bleach sink away, I got well within 24 hours. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of the bleach sink!

:001_huh: No fun.

 

I would never rinse in bleach water and then air dry. When I do soak in bleach water (it's just a little bit of bleach to a lot of water), I wash with fresh water and dish soap, and rinse in fresh water.

[stripe]

Never heard of it, but my grandma loves bleach!