bleach in dish water

[Am I the only one that has noticed that under the "maid" tab this is only my second post? Guess what I don't spend much time doing around here. :-)]

My husband and I have had a debate for years over whether or not to use bleach in the dishwater. I should point out that we hand wash our dishes, and will continue to do so until we win the lottery. After several arguments we basically left it at letting the person who is washing decide if bleach should be used. (Um, I may have added some to his sink full when he wasn't looking. But only when baby items or the such were involved!!! So stop judging!) Now, in my husband's senior year of college, I basically do all the washing.

As a compromise, I purchased Dawn with Bleach Alternative. Used that for a while but things just didn't seem to be as clean. I also tried for a long while to just not use bleach but my sink and counters started to look dirtier themselves. So now I'm back to bleach and Dawn, Dawn and bleach. But not too much bleach... I think. And I have an order I wash things in (I know, I know....). Not a strict one, but if I have kid drink or baby items, I wash those before the pan my raw chicken was marinating in gets dunked. You know, just in case.

I've been "researching" (maybe the number 3 thing I do as a homemaker, but I have yet to figure out how to organize it into a tab on this blog) and coming up with a wide variety of mixed results. So, I still don't know. Here are some of the better pieces of information I ran across:

The rule of thumb I've learned from health inspectors is to dunk your arm in the sanitize sink and pull it out. If you want to be fussy about it, there are test strips available. There should be a faint smell of bleach on the skin. The official requirement is usually 50-100 ppm of bleach, or one teaspoon per gallon.

So, "three thimbles" of bleach to a sink is close enough to commercial health code specs for home use, and certainly not going to harm anyone.

 Did I select this to be first because I'm biased?

My husband the Heath Inspector said: Putting the bleach in a dishwasher at the beginning of the cycle is useless, the bleach will get washed out. In most commercial dishwashers the bleach dispenses at the end of the cycle. Not enough to hurt anyone.

Okay, but I hand wash. Next...

Are you washing your dishes with raw sewage? Do you have some reason to suspect that your dishwater harbors some unholy bacterial colonies? If not, then you have no need for the bleach. You don't need antibacterial soap either. Regular soap does the same thing. Both do more harm than good. 

He has a point. But what about raw chicken juice? That's like sewage.

I don't believe such a small amount would be hazardous to your health. Diluted bleach is used all the time for disinfecting restaurant surfaces and can actually be used to sanitize drinking water. I'd be more worried about the other chemicals in your general cleanser than the bleach.

If your dishes are washed clean and rinsed with clean water, there should be no reason to further sanitize them, I'd consider the bleach treatment overkill. 

 So I guess the jury is still out. But I wipe my counters down after I wash dishes and my sink seems cleaner and I just like it. So I think I'll continue to use bleach; for now.

Daily Goals

A few months ago I made the goal to accomplish two housekeeping goals each day, every day: dishes and sweep.

I've always had a hate relationship with dishes and for the first few years of marriage I did them maybe twice a week since they really didn't need to be done more than that. I even coaxed my husband into a deal where he did dishes while he was not in school. But life changes. Three children and nine times the dishes (how does that happen?) came along. I fought with it. Heck, in the spirit of self-disclosure I'll share that I even put dirty dishes on my floor at times since I'd run out of counter space. But last year I surrendered: we are large enough now that they must be done daily, my husband is completely swamped so the task will fall to me. So I've made progress. Promise. I don't hate them anymore, I just have to find the time to do them....

The floor just gets out of control if it doesn't get done. I might skip a night thinking it's not so bad and by 10am the next day I'm stepping on crumbs everywhere.

I shared these goals with a friend. Her response, "Do you know who much of a difference that would make in my house?!" And I'm like, "EXACTLY!" Those two things really do. So tonight I forced myself and the sweeping is complete. In fact, I am admiring the floors as I type. The dishes? Well, the stack isn't that big, maybe they can wait until tomorrow....