The ineffable mystery of laundry

I have continued my foray into the the world of washing clothes. As I mentioned recently, All Radiant -- although it stinks of chemicals flowers -- will turn your white clothes white! Seriously, shockingly white. In that post I said I'd never use it again because of the stink bouquet...but I couldn't leave it there. There was one detail that haunted me.

It says on the label of All Radiant that it not only gets your whites white, it also brightens colors. I think there's something unholy about that. It's surely unethical. Yet the idea nagged at me. Had it really become possible (slaps face) to wash whites and colors together?! I had to learn if this was true.

So I took a new set of forest green flannel sheets and tossed them into the wash. Into the tub, I added just a bit of All Radiant and then a dose of detergent. And then (slaps face) I put a white kitchen towel in. (How that hurt!) And then pushed the button. Horrors! What had I done?

An hour later I got the miraculous answer to my question: although it was impossible, the white towel came out even whiter. Now I don't know about you, but I find this positively scandalous.

We cannot put whites and colors into the wash, willy nilly, and expect civilization to survive. This disgusting idea defies traditional Judeo-Christian values. Please take a moment to remember what Jesus Christ said atop Mount Everest on that Tuesday afternoon long, long ago:

"Thou shalt not mix whites and colors in the same wash."

That's authority enough for me, and I hope it is for you. All Radiant is obviously a demonic product, meant to seduce men's souls. It defies the natural order of god-directed laundry pursuits.

I reach out to you today for the good of the country. Don't mix your whites and colors. If you do, you'll ruin everyone's ability to do laundry. Suddenly people won't know which clothes to throw into which load. They'll freeze, dooming them to life as a statue. As a result, civilization will come to an abrupt halt -- and Nazis will rule once again.

I beg of you: do your laundry the way god planned it -- whites in one load, colors in another. Now, go with god, my children.

All Radiant

My headline sounds like the title for a religious post, eh? Don't worry. You'll never find one of those here. This post is about the mundane topic of doing laundry.

The headline is actually the name of a laundry product. At least, it seems to be called All Radiant. It's hard to tell. The word "All" is high up on the label, but then it says "Radiant" in largish letters a bit under that. In between, it informs us that the product is a "stain lifter". And hoo boy, it really is.

Living in upstate NY, it's hard to get your whites clean. If you put normal old bleach in the wash, the whites come out brown because of hard water. Over the years, through trial and painful error, we learned that if you use non-chlorine bleach, your clothes stay white. I did this for a while, but later ignored the whole issue by never buying anything white. However, that was then and this is now -- I've got a lot of white shirts these days.

So there I was in the supermarket, looking for non-chlorine bleach and...nada. Not one bleach product said "non-chlorine" on the label. It seems there was a sea change while I was busy wearing only colors. Anyway, I bought All Radiant and it blasted my clothes to a shocking white. (And you can use it on colors, too. I'll never understand this.)

But here's the thing. Although my whites were whiter than I'd ever hoped for -- they stunk of flowers. Oy, the stink! So I looked at the label. Nowhere on it did it say, in large block letters, "STINKS OF FLOWERS".

I don't think that's fair. There should be a law that says if your product stinks of chemicals flowers, you are required to post this info on the label. This way, people like me could avoid it like the plague, and people who like that sort of thing could flock to it.

"Oh, look Harry. Here's one that says it stinks of flowers! That sounds so lovely. Let's get it!"

"Oh, yes Madge. A product that stinks of flowers would truly match our lifestyle. We adore a good flowery stink. Tell you what -- when we get home, let's pour it all over the house!"

Seriously, how can a product be sold without mentioning that it stinks to high heaven? As for me, although it works splendidly I'll never buy it again. Meanwhile, I have to wash the stink out of my whites today. All Radiant. Ugh.