household advice needed
 

i have towels, you know. formerly white, now more in grayish hue. but they are nice towels and i want to return them to their former glory.
yes, laundry in DR sucks big time as it is not really possible to wash in very hot water - which is what i would do at home. but alas, we are not in kansas, or even szczecin, for all that matters. so i wash towels in cold water. i use washing powder (tide?), cloro and rayito. but the results are not impressive.
i need a good dominican method of making my whites real white. so please, ask your wives, mothers and maids - what can i do?

spare me any advice concerning the use of american products that one can get in america only. i am in DR and i need something that is available here, ok?

Get a bucket. Fill with water and chloro and washing powder. Place towels in buckets and soak for an hour. Buy Dominican washing soap - comes in blocks, jabon de cuaba or jabon candado it is called, and available in any colmado - whole or half a bar. Squat next to bucket and wash towels with soap, scrubbing hard until knuckles raw. Result is beautiful white towels. If no water in house do same process but at river.

Matilda

ok, i need to clarify: i need something that will make my towels white and require no work from me http://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/happy.gif

this dominican soap thing, can i use it for washing in a washing machine? tide is, frankly, crap.

OXYCLEAN will make anything whiter, and not bleach out colors. I am sure it is sold somewhere in the larger stores.
Just soak the towels for 1/2 hour in a sink with a cup of it, then wash as normal, add a little to the wash.

http://legendblog.files.wordpress.co...lean.gif?w=594

never seen it but then i never looked. i shall check la sirena.

White towels, sheets etc should never be washed with anything else but whites. My dear old aunt said so.

I made a call to Sicily because I remember pots of water and sheets boiling http://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/happy.gif Her instructions were similar to Mats except we had some huge copper kettle, filled it with water, boiled it (we didn't have hot water back then) left soapy sheets and towels over night then washed as normal.

You can do the same in washing machine. Good soaking is the key. She said you can also soap them up and place in the sun but only if they are 100% cotton.

Try adding a cup of white vinegar to your soak
Manu

Call yourself a hard working housewife?! You could try rubbing the towels with it and then putting them in the washing machine, but not sure it would work as well as you doing it yourself. Just think, all that hard work with the arms will be like pectoral exercise and stop the tits sagging later.

http://i46.tinypic.com/334iwp2.jpg

Matilda

hit dislike accidentally, Matilda...

I wish I could have liked it twice. http://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/happy.gif

Don't worry bud, got you covered on that second like. I'm sure it's to do with the no sagging tit part...at least for me that's the part I'm liking most http://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif

NotLurking

It's very common in Latin America and also here to use "Azul" to make whites whiter. It's a rather small looking cube "pastilla" that will dissolve in water as if it were blue ink. You put it in a little bag and in water with your whites inside and in the sun for 10-15 minutes (only works for whites!). Most detergents now incorporate it but when used full strength is pretty amazing what it can do. If that doesn't make your whites whiter, forget about trying anything else. You got to be very careful not to put too much in your water. If you never used it before, test it first with something white you don't care if you ruin it. You can buy them at groceries stores. I'm not sure if colmados carry it. I bought it at Janet's in Cabarete.

Yes. You can use it in the washing machine but you will have to grate it first, which requires some work on your part.

Use Matilda's method, but pay your Dominican cleaning lady to do it for you. I am sure she will do a better job, be happy with the couple of extra hundred pesos, and will be over the moon if you tell her she will have no sagging tits...

In a perfect world, she should pay you, but alas....

BelgianK

Expat-in -Cabarete yes I forgot about that. You can buy them in the colmado, they come in little boxes like this one and are called bolita azul - blue balls.

http://i48.tinypic.com/ba2d2.jpg

Or you can use bigger blue balls too, although these are usually used for dishes.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2f06pls.jpg

Matilda

I had shipped down all sorts of dishwashing stuff - Dawn and Palmolive for handwashing, Cascade for the dishwasher, but all the housekeeper wanted me to buy was the blue balls every time she knew I was headed to La Sirena.

As far as the white towels and clothes, as AnnaC said, always wash alone with bleach added. I had totally forgotten about the boiling them on the stove, but I can remember my Sicilian grandmother doing that too. My suegra used to soak them in a bleach and water mixture in a big plastic tub for what seemed to be a couple of hours before she put them into the washer.

i don't think boiling could be done - i have no pot big enough... at home my mum used to have a small metal tub. and a giant stove...
i have the blue stuff, the one used for washing dishes.

so the consensus is to soak, soak, soak and then wash. i will try it then, overnight. or maybe overday, it seems to better to leave that in the sun, right?

I think I remember somebody bragging about their 'double D's' ........... this may be a good routinehttp://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/ermm.gif

Perhaps some of could drop by for before and after inspections ???

Lider (Supermercados Nacional own brand) now has liquid jabon de cuaba. I've also seen it sold in grated form.
Jabon de cuaba seems to be a uniquely Dominican thing and it even has a Facebook fanpage
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jabon...75473395841973

Drying white items in the sun makes a big difference. And once you get them white, don't let them get gray again. Depending on your water (harder is worse), bleach may make them worse!

All this talk about blue balls.....and here I thought that was something completely different and now I find out it's used for washing whites.....damn lying men http://www.dr1.com/forums/images/smilies/speechless.gif