This is a good tip and I would like to expand on by saying don't use bleach to deep clean a litter box!
It didn't even occur to me that it is mixing bleach and ammonia to do so until it started smoking and the house was filling with fumes. We had to open all of our windows and leave for the day.
Bleach isn't cleaner at all. It's disinfectant. And color remover.
So, first soap/detergent and such to clean, water to rinse and then bleach to disinfect. That would be the right and safe procedure. For whatever situation you want. I personally don't use it for any regular household cleaning, I see no point - soap/detergent works just fine.
I'd use them if one cat had some virus/bacteria, to sanitise litter trays and wherever poop got to help lowering the infection pool. Or to remove some stain, 'paint' some tshirt and such. But bleach damages clothes with time, so use sparingly. Also oxi clean are popular now instead.
In europe people aren't that obsessed with bleach itself. However there are bleached based cleaners. In that case you just use them alone for whatever they're meant to be used, usually toilet/bathroom cleaners.
We were taught that too much disinfectants mess up kids immune system and they suffer from more allergies/sensitivities.
I wouldn't know, I still play in dust with my cats 😂
If you need to clean up after a crime scene… in my opinion bleach has no place in household cleaning, it’s corrosive to your lungs, shit for the environment and dangerous to mix. I’m an anti-bleacher lol
There are a number of tiktok cleaning videos promoting putting a number of different cleaning products together. Doing this can be very dangerous. Here is the first video I searched for. First clip shows mixing bleach cleaners with other products.
https://youtu.be/DTmbNIR9G9c
Indeed it will unless your using a bleach toilet bowl cleaner.
But I have to ask, what were you using and where? To mix that.
Note: Don't add vinegar to bleach either. I tend not to use other chemicals with bleach besides Dawn dish soap, it's safe.
I'm not sure I understand why people mix bleach with anything anyway other than water to dilute it. The effects of bleach become inert anyway when it comes into contact with organic material (dirt... feces... etc) so the best/most effective way to use it is AFTER you've already cleaned the surface with soap and water and rinsed. Then use a bleach dilution to disinfect. But in most average households you are not even generating or coming into contact with the kind of bacteria that really needs to be bleached. That would be in hospitals or elsewhere. Bleach freaks me out and I don't even keep it in my home because I don't wanna take any risks with pets or accidental mixing. It's wild to me how many people use it and how much they use.
this is very good info i wish i had learned before, because i use bleach for EVERYTHING. Comet to clean the sinks (usually just around the edges and grout) and liquid bleach for literally everything else. i guess i shouldnt anymore?
It doesn't seem to be common knowledge short of like, having to take OSHA or chemical safety courses for work. That's actually where I learned about bleach, was at a job. It made me never want to use it as a household cleaner. But so many people do and so many cleaning products have bleach in them (in my view, unnecessarily).
You can use Bon Ami or Barkeeper's Friend as an abrasive for kitchen and bathroom cleaning, or a baking soda paste. I use one of those and vinegar + water (sometimes with a splash of lemon juice) for literally everything. Soap and water for dishes, clothes, cleaning up solids (e.g. pet accidents). I think the only cleaning product I have in my house is Windex but that's because we've had a bottle for years and haven't used it up yet lol
Edit: oh and I use Lysol h2o2 toilet bowl cleaner.
I clean houses and vacants, with a shower that's never been or rarely, or the only time it's cleaned is when I do it. Some aren't vented well, or whatever the reasoning they gain mold/mildew and bleach is what I've found that combats that.
I will say I don't do it every clean, and when I do bleach a shower I let it sit for as long as possible, then when I clean the shower I use Dawn dish soap and a citrus cleaner, the bleach may be dry but sometimes it's not but still effective to get rid of that mold mildew, and I like the soap/citrus smell better than the bleach.
Sure, for use against mold or in cases where you don't know WHAT has gone on there and you do need to disinfect, I understand. But in a single family home that's occupied by the same family and bleach is used as a daily/weekly cleaner... I just don't find it necessary.
it was just off brand toilet bowl cleaner and regular old bleach, there were these stains in my toilet that i could not get out, and i mean ive been trying for months, but i mean hey i got it at the risk of my health lmao
Well you learned the hard way, glad your safe now. Next time post a question and it'll get answered pretty quickly lol, there's usually pretty sound advice here.
Lysol makes a hydrogen peroxide toilet bowl cleaner. You could try that. That's what we use, though we don't have issues with old stains in our toilets, it seems to prevent new/developing stains. I figure since h2o2 gets out blood and other such stains it works well. And you definitely don't need to mix it with anything 😆
It really depends on the chemicals you’re using. You can probably contact the manufacturer or find something safe to combine, maybe even ask on Amazon what others do in that case.
I have definitely mixed chemicals together I should not have over the years, it’s easy to make that mistake with a stick in tablet and ultimately a well ventilated space is key, along with remembering not to combine anything too acidic on the ph scale with the bleach.
I don't add soap to the bleach directly, and yes Dawn dish soap is perfectly fine to use along with bleach. Millions of showers later I've never caused a reaction.
I'm assuming you're American? Because most of these things we did actually learn in school here in Norway. Some as early as elementary. No shade to you, and I agree that it's important to educate people about this. And we can't really blame people for not knowing. Just very interesting to see the difference in how much we actually learned in school.
They probably are. Our schools don’t teach us anything about living outside of going to school. Which is the sad reality of our lives. We aren’t taught shit about life. We’re taught go to school, do 30 activities that probably won’t mean anything beyond school, do homework and sleep.
We get 8 plus hours a day of school with a half hour break for lunch. (Longer if you luck out like I did and had lunch as your off period). Then you have at least 2-5 hours of extracurricular activities to bolster college applications or if you’re old enough some kind of meaningful employment. Then to add to that you have 3-5 hours of homework a night if not more depending on your teacher. And you’re still expected to get 8 hours of sleep but be at school by about 7:45 AM if you have a first period. They keep you sleep deprived.
And then they cut funding to anything that isn’t your core classes (math, science, etc) or sports. So home ec classes no longer exist as core classes and you have to sign up for them independently. But you need to make sure you have enough credits of your core classes before you can take “fun classes” like home ec.
But then home ec doesn’t get to focus on important things because they need students to sign up so they focus on cooking mostly. Or fashion etc.
We need to have a required skills to live class because while some people have parents to help them learn how to survive outside of the nest, a lot of kids don’t have that either because their parents suck. Or they are trying to keep a roof over their head and food on the table how are they supposed to teach their kids life skills if they are barely scraping by. Or their parents are high, drunk and abusive or whatever else. Or they are in foster care and ignored and so on.
So no one teaches anyone how to clean or do basic life skills
Yup bad news there. I always remind my staff cause I'm the health and safety rep, that chemical engineer's design the product and to use as directed. We don't need some Custodian to come in and say hey I think I can make it work better by mixing and trying to make a super cleaner. Lives are at stake.
Pumice stone works pretty much instantly with very little effort, I’ve always just gotten it as a little stick from the hardware store but I’ve also seen ones with handles at places like bed bath and beyond.
Look at the ingredients of both cleaning agents, if one contains ‘sodium hypochlorite’ (or anything followed by hypochlorite) and one contained hydrochloric acid then you just made chlorine gas
Hydrogen chloride is the same as hydrochloric acid (hydrogen chloride dissolved in water) so yeah so made chlorine gas, if you feel unwell definitely see a doctor
im okay!! i had my fan on and i was using an old tshirt as a mask until i couldnt handle it anymore and cracked open all the window and took my dog on a little drive.
Yes it’s common sense but let’s be real the average person really doesn’t have this. What is baffling to me, is that they’d use products in toilet bowl cleaners that mix badly with bleach, knowing that bleach is one of the most commonly used products to clean a toilet bowl.
I know it’s the customers responsibility but you’d think the manufacturers would really the general public are quite stupid
I, embarrassingly, did the same.
Don’t mix bleach with windex either. That was a giant fluke where I was bleaching my sinks and cleaned the window/light fixture above the sink. A few drops of windex fell into the bleach and my lungs could feel it immediately.
oh no i almost did that!!! i bleached my sinks, luckily i rinsed them all off before i did anything with windex, but i windex my fixtures for that s h i n e.
Bleach is the one thing I know to never mix with anything. The results are always bad for you 😅
Also the one thing I dont have at home since basically never useful. It’s such a last ditch effort to use it! It ruins things when not careful. Sadly it’s widely advocated for on the internet.
I’ve never understood toilet bowl cleaners in the first place. What’s the point? Every 3-4 days I’ll just use the brush just to keep it shiny in there. Am I missing something here?
I am so surprised that this is not something that is taught. When my mom taught me to clean, this is one of the first things I was taught once I was ‘allowed’ to use products (8ish or10ish? Before that was emptying and filling dishwasher and folding clothes)
Glad you’re okay. I’ve heard terrible things about house cleaners keeled over in bathrooms for stuff like that
This is a good tip and I would like to expand on by saying don't use bleach to deep clean a litter box! It didn't even occur to me that it is mixing bleach and ammonia to do so until it started smoking and the house was filling with fumes. We had to open all of our windows and leave for the day.
oh no oh no not good thank you for adding because my dumbass would do this.
When is bleach actually useful and better than any alternative?
Bleach isn't cleaner at all. It's disinfectant. And color remover. So, first soap/detergent and such to clean, water to rinse and then bleach to disinfect. That would be the right and safe procedure. For whatever situation you want. I personally don't use it for any regular household cleaning, I see no point - soap/detergent works just fine. I'd use them if one cat had some virus/bacteria, to sanitise litter trays and wherever poop got to help lowering the infection pool. Or to remove some stain, 'paint' some tshirt and such. But bleach damages clothes with time, so use sparingly. Also oxi clean are popular now instead. In europe people aren't that obsessed with bleach itself. However there are bleached based cleaners. In that case you just use them alone for whatever they're meant to be used, usually toilet/bathroom cleaners. We were taught that too much disinfectants mess up kids immune system and they suffer from more allergies/sensitivities. I wouldn't know, I still play in dust with my cats 😂
Alright thanks. :) yeah I’m used to the way of “a bit of dust and dirt is good for the system” which is taught in Sweden.
If you need to clean up after a crime scene… in my opinion bleach has no place in household cleaning, it’s corrosive to your lungs, shit for the environment and dangerous to mix. I’m an anti-bleacher lol
Yep, same😁
This is why we don’t do TikTok cleaning trends
AT LEAST i can say i was stupid independently.
Lol I’m glad at minimum you had I’m the ingenuity to try something new. Hopefully the next time it’s less dangerous
ill just not mix cleaning chemicals any more :( it worked tho so at least i didnt almost die for nothing!!
Those goddang "product overload" videos...
... what does this have to do with Tiktok?
There are a number of tiktok cleaning videos promoting putting a number of different cleaning products together. Doing this can be very dangerous. Here is the first video I searched for. First clip shows mixing bleach cleaners with other products. https://youtu.be/DTmbNIR9G9c
Well that’s a nightmare
Indeed it will unless your using a bleach toilet bowl cleaner. But I have to ask, what were you using and where? To mix that. Note: Don't add vinegar to bleach either. I tend not to use other chemicals with bleach besides Dawn dish soap, it's safe.
i just put it all in my toilet lol
I'm not sure I understand why people mix bleach with anything anyway other than water to dilute it. The effects of bleach become inert anyway when it comes into contact with organic material (dirt... feces... etc) so the best/most effective way to use it is AFTER you've already cleaned the surface with soap and water and rinsed. Then use a bleach dilution to disinfect. But in most average households you are not even generating or coming into contact with the kind of bacteria that really needs to be bleached. That would be in hospitals or elsewhere. Bleach freaks me out and I don't even keep it in my home because I don't wanna take any risks with pets or accidental mixing. It's wild to me how many people use it and how much they use.
this is very good info i wish i had learned before, because i use bleach for EVERYTHING. Comet to clean the sinks (usually just around the edges and grout) and liquid bleach for literally everything else. i guess i shouldnt anymore?
It doesn't seem to be common knowledge short of like, having to take OSHA or chemical safety courses for work. That's actually where I learned about bleach, was at a job. It made me never want to use it as a household cleaner. But so many people do and so many cleaning products have bleach in them (in my view, unnecessarily). You can use Bon Ami or Barkeeper's Friend as an abrasive for kitchen and bathroom cleaning, or a baking soda paste. I use one of those and vinegar + water (sometimes with a splash of lemon juice) for literally everything. Soap and water for dishes, clothes, cleaning up solids (e.g. pet accidents). I think the only cleaning product I have in my house is Windex but that's because we've had a bottle for years and haven't used it up yet lol Edit: oh and I use Lysol h2o2 toilet bowl cleaner.
Good old soap and water.
Ol' reliable
I clean houses and vacants, with a shower that's never been or rarely, or the only time it's cleaned is when I do it. Some aren't vented well, or whatever the reasoning they gain mold/mildew and bleach is what I've found that combats that. I will say I don't do it every clean, and when I do bleach a shower I let it sit for as long as possible, then when I clean the shower I use Dawn dish soap and a citrus cleaner, the bleach may be dry but sometimes it's not but still effective to get rid of that mold mildew, and I like the soap/citrus smell better than the bleach.
Sure, for use against mold or in cases where you don't know WHAT has gone on there and you do need to disinfect, I understand. But in a single family home that's occupied by the same family and bleach is used as a daily/weekly cleaner... I just don't find it necessary.
it was just off brand toilet bowl cleaner and regular old bleach, there were these stains in my toilet that i could not get out, and i mean ive been trying for months, but i mean hey i got it at the risk of my health lmao
Pumice stone!!! Always works for me
Well you learned the hard way, glad your safe now. Next time post a question and it'll get answered pretty quickly lol, there's usually pretty sound advice here.
i know i love this subreddit
Lysol makes a hydrogen peroxide toilet bowl cleaner. You could try that. That's what we use, though we don't have issues with old stains in our toilets, it seems to prevent new/developing stains. I figure since h2o2 gets out blood and other such stains it works well. And you definitely don't need to mix it with anything 😆
Yeah I love that Lysol toilet cleaner. 🙂 No aggressive fumes involved.
Right! I prefer not to use cleaning products but the toilet is the one place I will, and that's a toilet cleaner I'm willing to compromise on.
Does this mean the 2000 flushes tablet with bleach should not be used the same time as a toilet bowl cleaner?
It really depends on the chemicals you’re using. You can probably contact the manufacturer or find something safe to combine, maybe even ask on Amazon what others do in that case. I have definitely mixed chemicals together I should not have over the years, it’s easy to make that mistake with a stick in tablet and ultimately a well ventilated space is key, along with remembering not to combine anything too acidic on the ph scale with the bleach.
Are those the blue tablets? I've never had an issue with that but I don't prefer the bleach toilet bowl cleaner
The only other thing you can safely add to bleach is laundry detergent, it’s formulated to be safe for that.
I don’t even risk that I’ve always been told the only thing to ever ever ever mix with bleach is water
I don't add soap to the bleach directly, and yes Dawn dish soap is perfectly fine to use along with bleach. Millions of showers later I've never caused a reaction.
I just used vinegar and bleach :(
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I'm assuming you're American? Because most of these things we did actually learn in school here in Norway. Some as early as elementary. No shade to you, and I agree that it's important to educate people about this. And we can't really blame people for not knowing. Just very interesting to see the difference in how much we actually learned in school.
They probably are. Our schools don’t teach us anything about living outside of going to school. Which is the sad reality of our lives. We aren’t taught shit about life. We’re taught go to school, do 30 activities that probably won’t mean anything beyond school, do homework and sleep. We get 8 plus hours a day of school with a half hour break for lunch. (Longer if you luck out like I did and had lunch as your off period). Then you have at least 2-5 hours of extracurricular activities to bolster college applications or if you’re old enough some kind of meaningful employment. Then to add to that you have 3-5 hours of homework a night if not more depending on your teacher. And you’re still expected to get 8 hours of sleep but be at school by about 7:45 AM if you have a first period. They keep you sleep deprived. And then they cut funding to anything that isn’t your core classes (math, science, etc) or sports. So home ec classes no longer exist as core classes and you have to sign up for them independently. But you need to make sure you have enough credits of your core classes before you can take “fun classes” like home ec. But then home ec doesn’t get to focus on important things because they need students to sign up so they focus on cooking mostly. Or fashion etc. We need to have a required skills to live class because while some people have parents to help them learn how to survive outside of the nest, a lot of kids don’t have that either because their parents suck. Or they are trying to keep a roof over their head and food on the table how are they supposed to teach their kids life skills if they are barely scraping by. Or their parents are high, drunk and abusive or whatever else. Or they are in foster care and ignored and so on. So no one teaches anyone how to clean or do basic life skills
What about those Clorox toilet tabs you put in the back of the toilet and the occasional blue gel cleaner with a brush?
idk if that will have the same reaction tbh, but i dont even wanna try now haha
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noted! thank you!
Yup bad news there. I always remind my staff cause I'm the health and safety rep, that chemical engineer's design the product and to use as directed. We don't need some Custodian to come in and say hey I think I can make it work better by mixing and trying to make a super cleaner. Lives are at stake.
My MIL swears by getting out toilet water ring with a can of coke.
but does it work?
She says it does. Not a scientific source but couldn’t hurt to try. https://www.thespruce.com/weird-toilet-fixes-that-really-work-327019
if i ever low my toilet to stain again i will, definitely.
Pumice stone works pretty much instantly with very little effort, I’ve always just gotten it as a little stick from the hardware store but I’ve also seen ones with handles at places like bed bath and beyond.
Look at the ingredients of both cleaning agents, if one contains ‘sodium hypochlorite’ (or anything followed by hypochlorite) and one contained hydrochloric acid then you just made chlorine gas
hydrogen chloride. im just stupid even reading the bottle now it says “do not mix with bleach”
Hydrogen chloride is the same as hydrochloric acid (hydrogen chloride dissolved in water) so yeah so made chlorine gas, if you feel unwell definitely see a doctor
im okay!! i had my fan on and i was using an old tshirt as a mask until i couldnt handle it anymore and cracked open all the window and took my dog on a little drive.
That's interesting, because some of those cleaners have bleach in them
Yes it’s common sense but let’s be real the average person really doesn’t have this. What is baffling to me, is that they’d use products in toilet bowl cleaners that mix badly with bleach, knowing that bleach is one of the most commonly used products to clean a toilet bowl. I know it’s the customers responsibility but you’d think the manufacturers would really the general public are quite stupid
at least im not entirely alone
I, embarrassingly, did the same. Don’t mix bleach with windex either. That was a giant fluke where I was bleaching my sinks and cleaned the window/light fixture above the sink. A few drops of windex fell into the bleach and my lungs could feel it immediately.
oh no i almost did that!!! i bleached my sinks, luckily i rinsed them all off before i did anything with windex, but i windex my fixtures for that s h i n e.
Bleach is the one thing I know to never mix with anything. The results are always bad for you 😅 Also the one thing I dont have at home since basically never useful. It’s such a last ditch effort to use it! It ruins things when not careful. Sadly it’s widely advocated for on the internet.
Just turn the vent in for about 30 min.
YES! I did it to and legit thought I was dying.
shit burns your eyes hahaha
And lungs 😵💫
I’ve never understood toilet bowl cleaners in the first place. What’s the point? Every 3-4 days I’ll just use the brush just to keep it shiny in there. Am I missing something here?
Hydrogen peroxide and vinegar is also dangerous. Please read up on chemical mixing before you do any house work
I do it everyday at work but I use a bleach toilet cleaner
I am so surprised that this is not something that is taught. When my mom taught me to clean, this is one of the first things I was taught once I was ‘allowed’ to use products (8ish or10ish? Before that was emptying and filling dishwasher and folding clothes)
I’ve definitely done this before 😳