The Right Way to Bleach Clothes

Sort your laundry. Separate white items that are safe for a chlorine bleach. The care instructions should appear on tags on the items. Most whites can be bleached safely with chlorine bleach.

Wash your whites in hot water, or as hot as your machine offers, with the usual amount of detergent. Add a cup of chlorine bleach to the bleach dispenser or, if there isn't one, dilute the bleach with about a quart of water and add it about five minutes into the wash cycle.

Sort your colored items. Make one pile for light colors and another pile for darks. Darks and lights should not be washed together, regardless of bleach type. Add a powdered all-fabric color-safe bleach at the same time you add the laundry detergent. Run the wash cycle as usual.

Hang very light-colored and white items on a clothesline in the sunshine, if possible. The sun bleaches fabrics, as well as disinfecting and deodorizing them. In the days before chemical bleaches were invented, whites were laid out in "bleaching fields," according to Encyclopedia.com.