How do I reactivate dried-out sanitizing wipes?

[Ginevra]

I have a years-old Costco sized container of Lysol wipes but since I don’t use those under ordinary circumstances, it has dried out. I do have a small amount of rubbing alcohol; about 1/3 of a standard bottle. I also have some Ms. Meyers Clean Day concentrate, but I’m pretty sure that contains no Alcohol. 

Would you use some alcohol and some plain water? Or what can I do to make these functional? 

[Chris in VA]

Are they just alcohol and water wipes, or are there a bunch of other  ingredients?

You can use an 70/30 alcohol and water solution but do you just have bleach? I would make a spray and use that instead with paper towels. Just me, though.

[J-rap]

1 minute ago, parent said:

I would use with spray cleaner to clean bathrooms . 

I wouldn't try to rehydrate unless you really need sanitizing wipes.  If so, pay attention to % alcohol.  Isn't it a min of 60% to sanitize?

That's what I read recently.

[Pen]

I would look up any adverse results from mixing chemicals if going from Lysol to something else.

60% alcohol is minimum for sanitizing I have read. Around 70% is optimum.

I have some old first aid kit H2O2 wipes. They are even older, and not dried out, but not sure if the H2O2 is still potent.  I may add some newsr H2O2 liquid.  Also I am plastic bagging used wipes and considering disinfecting them (maybe with the steamer🤣 Bill and Texan had gotten me to buy and now use!) and rewetting and reusing the wipes.  

 

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

Do you have other wipes that are newer?  If so, I would just put the old ones in the new container once the new ones are used up.  

I do but I only have one smaller normal-sized Lysol and one of wipes that are “natural” and I don’t think they contain alcohol. 

I wonder if it is possible to order on Amazon even if they wont come for a while. 

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Chris in VA said:

Are they just alcohol and water wipes, or are there a bunch of other  ingredients?

You can use an 70/30 alcohol and water solution but do you just have bleach? I would make a spray and use that instead with paper towels. Just me, though.

It’s alcohol and something else unpronounceable that I dont remember. 

I do have bleach and was considering putting that in a spray bottle. I just don’t normally do that because I don’t want to ruin my clothes or other fabric that might catch overspray like towels or shower curtain. It may come to that out of necessity, though. 

[sweet2ndchance]

If I must use water to rehydrate the wipes, I would use distilled but that is mostly because our well water is crappy to begin with and we keep distilled water in the house all the time anyways. You could just spray the surface with water or alcohol and use the dried up wipes to wipe the surface that way.

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, sweet2ndchance said:

If I must use water to rehydrate the wipes, I would use distilled but that is mostly because our well water is crappy to begin with and we keep distilled water in the house all the time anyways. You could just spray the surface with water or alcohol and use the dried up wipes to wipe the surface that way.

We have well water but have an RO unit for drinking water. So I would use that. But the spray idea is a good one. 

[sweet2ndchance]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

We have well water but have an RO unit for drinking water. So I would use that. But the spray idea is a good one. 

An RO unit wouldn't even begin to address our well water lol. It's seriously horrible. We considered an RO until we realized it would probably cause more problems than it solved for us.

[sweet2ndchance]

37 minutes ago, Patty Joanna said:

If you use bleach, you have to leave it on the surface for a few minutes.  Use cold water, not hot.  

I just read on Apple's site that you should not use bleach on the phones.  Use alcohol.  I don't know why.

 

Bleach is too corrosive and doesn't evaporate fast enough to not damage the phone. All rubbing alcohol is watered down when you get it, it evaporates quickly and when it does, it helps water evaporate away with it so the phone doesn't doesn't sustain water damage.

[Suzanne in ABQ]

15 minutes ago, Patty Joanna said:

I also just saw that you shouldn't mix bleach with alcohol.  So I don't know that you should use the wipes with something not included in the ingredients list.  

I *also* have a question:  they say that soap and water is enough to kill the virus...or is it just enough to get it off your hands?  At any rate, IF soap and water is enough, would that mean that baby-wipes (like Pampers and so on) would be enough?  Or do we NEED disinfecting wipes?

 

Soap (and detergent) work by breaking apart oil molecules and surrounding them, so they can be rinsed away. The virus cell is surrounded by a lipid (fat) layer, so given adequate time, soap will cause the virus cell to fall apart into a zillion pieces. If soap and water work better than alcohol wipes, and should be used if available for the surface you are cleaning. Sanitizers work in a pinch, if soap and water are not available.

I would think that wipes that bubble or foam up, or better if they definitely contain soap, would work, given enough time to do their chemical thing on the lipid layer, but I don't have any wipes available to check whether they are soap or something else. If they're just basically water and lotion, they're not going to do anything.

[athena1277]

1 hour ago, Patty Joanna said:

I also just saw that you shouldn't mix bleach with alcohol.  So I don't know that you should use the wipes with something not included in the ingredients list.  

I *also* have a question:  they say that soap and water is enough to kill the virus...or is it just enough to get it off your hands?  At any rate, IF soap and water is enough, would that mean that baby-wipes (like Pampers and so on) would be enough?  Or do we NEED disinfecting wipes?

There’s a list, put out by the CDC, FDA, or some similar government agency that lists over 200 cleaning products that will kill Covid-19.  I looked at it yesterday, but can’t remember where.