Now TikTok wants us to add Vodka to our laundry

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mattl

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Got to say I have better uses for Vodka...

 

<blockquote>
If you’ve ever had the distinctly unpleasant experience of your towels coming out of the washing machine smelling a little weird, it turns out there’s a simple tip that can eliminate that problem — and most people have likely never heard about it before.
The scoop

The trick is to mix a cup of vodka — the cheaper, the better — in with your laundry detergent.

“I’m not going to lie, it took me a little while to get on board with this laundry tip,” content creator Natasha Twisselman (@twisselmantradingco) shared in a video with her followers. “But after some research and trying it a few times, I am a BELIEVER!”

 

</blockquote>
 

 

www.yahoo.com

Mom shares shocking hack for amazing-smelling towels: ‘It took me a little while to get on board’

"You need to have [this] in your bar — and your laundry room."
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
 
Didn`t the first generations of liquid detergents in the 1980s contain large amounts of alcohols like ethanol?

Nowadays stuff like glycerin or propylene glycol seems to be favored instead, these are some sort of alcohols too, aren`t they? Hopefully someone with more insight will chime in.

I always thought anything alcohol related was added to for viscosity control (to make high concentrated detergents runnier) whereas salt is added to make cheap products thicker to give the fake impression of a more concentrated product.
AFAIK some alcohols also improve shelf life of enzymes in liquid formulation.
Never thought of odor control, but could imagine that alcohols serve various purposes in a liquid detergent just like phosphates used to do in powders.

But Vodka by the cupful, seriously?
Isn`t there a cheaper alternative to buy in the US than Vodka? Maybe something that`s not meant to drink and thus not taxed accordingly?
 
Why would someone use Vodka in the laundry to add alcohol for cleaning purposes? Just get a bottle of 70% rubbing alcohol for a dollar or less. Seems that perhaps these people may have been drinking too much of their laundry “aid” to come up with a hare brained idea like putting expensive Vodka in the Maytag.

Lay off the hooch!

Eddie
 
I can’t wait until I see the comments start rolling in

Saying “oh, no, my dryer had a fire, after I started this TikTok thing, and that I will sit and laugh, saying

«Ви повинні бути розумнішим поколінням, і ви повинні знати, що ви ніколи не використовуєте легкозаймисті рідини для прання, уявіть, що сказала б бідна бабуся Калинка, якби побачила, що ви це робите?»

-translation-

“you should be smarter generation, and you have known that you never douse flammable liquids on your laundry, imagine what dear old Babushka Kalinka would say if she saw you doing that?”

горілка, нею не вмивайся, запивай
-translation-
Vodka, don’t wash with it, drink to it
 
I don`t get the point of a fire hazard.
Apart from dilution with plenty of wash and rinse water, is vodka even at full strength strong enough to ignite?

So even if a whole bottle of 100% alcohol was used per wash cycle you`d never even come close to the alcohol content of beer when the cycle is done.

What`s next, are clothes with beer or wine stains that haven`t shiftet completely in the wash unsafe to put in the dryer?

[this post was last edited: 12/6/2023-07:39]
 
Re:#7

Stefan you have the same thoughts on this that I had. For cryin’ out loud, after a cup of even 90% alcohol ran through both a wash and rinse cycle in even a washer that barely uses any water at all any remaining alcohol would be such a dilute solution that there no way it would ignite. It would be like trying to light a half way consumed highball that had sat out overnight with the ice melting in the glass, zero volatility.

This is just someone’s foolish idea to boost the cleaning ability of laundry detergent using some homemade solution. The only thing it is likely to accomplish is a waste of the users money. Why not just light a dollar bill on fire instead?

Eddie
 
What in the?!?! Maybe people should be sprinkling some common sense in their laundry practices instead of adding booze to it. Some people REALLY do think alcohol fixes and is a solution to everything in life it seems.

Btw, NEVER listen to the advice that’s given out by people on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts since it’s nothing but bogus and dubious information. I’ve seen some people claim “You can go X amount of miles with modern oils to the point where you can change it once a year” along with “wash things on cold to save money”. Some people who use TikTok simply can’t rub two brain cells together, literally everyone I’ve known who has gotten TikTok literally HAS NOT been the same to the point wether I wonder if they are genuine friends anymore. I am glad I didn’t join any social media until sometime after I graduated 6 years ago in 2017, not worth my time to get caught up in any sort of drama or worrying about the most trivial things you can think of.
 
Ok, so I had to look it up in my favorite specialist book on laundry detergents just to make sure I wasn`t talking BS in reply #3.
On a side note, I fully agree with Eddie on how stupid it is to use expensive booze for this purpose.

And just because Blanche didn`t pick up a detergent related topic so far doesn`t necessarily mean it`s all wrong about it ;-) Just saying...

Roughly translated it says "Alcohols are used as solubilizers in the manufacturing of liquid detergents to prevent a separation of product phases, to prevent the formation of precipitates in the product and to improve solubility when it`s flushed in over the detergent drawer. (Viscosity control)
Lower alcohols in particular ethanol, isopropanol and propylenglycol have several purposes in liquid detergents.
As solvents they enhance the detergency of sufactants. additionally and at higher concentrations they act as preservatives and they serve to stabilize enzymes in liquid products. To support the stabilizing properties sometimes polyethylene glycol, glycerin or urea are used."

mrboilwash-2023120611233006567_1.jpg

mrboilwash-2023120611233006567_2.jpg
 
If you’ve ever had the distinctly unpleasant experience of your towels coming out of the washing machine smelling a little weird

Nope not once, ever.

unimatic1140-2021060411212608668_1.jpg
 
Maybe the poor soul has a drinking problem and this is a ruse to keep vodka around the house without having stashes in obvious places. It's true that liquid detergents have been known for their grease cutting abilities because of the solvents in them and there are aerosol laundry pretreaters like Shout and early Spray and Wash which use dry cleaning fluid, but this seems like a desperate & ill-informed attempt. There is obviously a problem with stinky clothes because yesterday I saw, for the first time, an ad for a Tide product that is added to the rinse to knock down stench. This leads me to believe that low temperature laundering is not the roaring success that the Department of Energy is hoping it would be. I feel sorry for people who cannot afford to heat water to sufficiently warm temps to clean their clothes, but I don't see anyone advocating cold showers to save hot water. I believe that with water heaters being turned down to low temps on board heaters in front loading washers are going to become necessary or at least should be an option to get wash water temperatures up to where washing performance does not suffer. Most people cannot purge hot water lines before starting their washers or do not know how to do so. I have set my water heater to 150F and clearing the line of cold water before starting the SQ FL gives a full load of bath sheets a hot wash temperature of around 135F which seems adequate. I have not tried clearing the hot water line and doing a fill into the empty machine to see if pre-warming it would give a hotter wash because it does not seem necessary.
 
The thing I don’t understand is some people think they’ll save tons of money washing on cold but the reality is, it’ll be more expensive since you’ll have to spend money on additives that supposedly will help but is usually just a cash grab, along with having to buy new clothes and eventually a new machine once it develops a nasty smell that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what you do. Cheap is just another word for Expensive in my book since it’ll end up costing you more than if you were to invest in quality detergent and hot water.
 
Cold Laundry

 
There's also the factor that the cold proponents reference only the choice of Cold or Hot, rarely a mention of Warm ... although Warm nowadays is essentially cold so perhaps that's why, there is no longer a valid warm.  Hot is a reasonable warm in the majority of machines but the control label remains as Hot so consumers assume it's full HOT and are afraid.
 

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