I know I have been MIA but June was a crazy busy month and this month isn’t going to be any better!

This past week we traveled to New Braunfels, Texas for a little family reunion. Great fun visiting family, floating the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers and doing the “tourist” thing at the Alamo and on the River Walk in San Antonio!

I had a few major projects at the apartments the last few months!

We moved Katie out of her college apartment and all of her stuff is in storage waiting on her move to Delaware in a few weeks. She is there this week apartment hunting.

I’m not looking forward to driving over 22 hours in a big moving truck but after we get her settled we are headed to New York City for a few days! One of my all-time favorite places to visit and I have wanted to take Katie for years! We will take the train from Philadelphia to New York! Just too much fun!

Matt sold his “starter home” and will close on it and his new home this month…bigger house with a pool!

So…what do I want to share today.

Something that is LIFE CHANGING!!!!

Bleach loads with HE detergent.

As I have mention before, I love white bath towels, bath rugs, sheets, dish towels, and wash clothes…and of course I love my white cotton undies and Brian always wears white cotton t-shirts. My favorite thing about them all is the fact that I can bleach everything…clean and sanitary.

Right?

WRONG!

I noticed something weird when i went from a “regular” washing machine and detergent to a front load machine and HE detergent…the white towels and wash clothes always seemed to have “stains” that just never came out…makeup, coffee, chocolate…and the under arms of the white t-shirts always seemed “dingy” and never really “smelled” clean.

A few months ago we bought a new washing machine…we went from a front load to a top load…but it still uses HE detergent.

Side note: this is exactly why I didn’t put one of those nifty counters across the top of my machines when I remodeled my laundry room a few years ago…I THOUGHT I might eventually go back to a top load machine. Sure enough, I had my fill of front load washers. Maybe it was brand, but we had two machines that lasted about 4 years each. This time we went with a good ole’ “American made” brand…we will see how it holds up!

ANYWHO….a few weeks after we installed it i noticed it was making a weird knocking noise during the spin cycle…so I called and they sent out a repair person who promptly IDed the problem…the water hose was hitting the back of the machine during the spin cycle.

But the BIG news was that I found out WHY my whites didn’t seem to be getting as “white” and clean as I thought they should.

According to the repair guy, HE detergent and bleach DO NOT mix….basically if you mix bleach and HE detergent, the detergent will not “clean.”

Some machines dispense the bleach AFTER the wash…mine does not so I have basically been bleaching my whites, but not really washing them.

So now I wash my whites in hot water with the HE detergent….then I do a “rinse and spin” cycle with the bleach.

Adds a step to my bleach loads but it is well worth the effort!

Now, I want to qualify that this is what the repair guy told me. After a few months of testing his theory, I have come to the conclusion that there is merit to his madness.

My whites are whiter, the stains have disappeared and the t-shirt pits smell fresh and are no longer “dingy.”

So…there you go!

Hope this bit of information works for some of you…as I said, for me, it has been life-changing!