A review by strangeeigenfunction
Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson, Karin B. Miller

informative inspiring

3.5

I suspect there are some scientific inaccuracies here. 

  • The whole rationale for detergents that aren't just soap is that they work better in hard water while regular soap doesn't so much. This is not addressed at all.
  • I guess you can describe soap as making water wetter, but it's frequently explained as allowing otherwise non-miscible nonpolar substances to disperse in water, and I suspect leaving that out is an incomplete explanation.

  • Stop feeding chemical phobia: a simple substance like "olive oil" contains some amounts of scary sounding stuff like hydroxytyrosol. ooh scary—but it's just a random chemical made by the plant. you are made of chemicals, including some that would have very complicated names if named systemically 
  • I swear at one point he referred to salt or vinegar or alcohol as an enzyme.
  • Vodka is mostly ethanol, one of the VOCs he mentions. I'd have to check, but I'd expect his favorite isopropanol/running alcohol is on the VOC list as well—it's volatile and organic in the chemical sense.
  • I don't know in what world coffee is an inorganic stain, by either chemical or colloquial "living" criteria. I can only guess that either tannins(?) or maybe some weird pyrolyzed organic(chemically) compounds from the roasting process behave very differently than most plants? (but then mud is organic? idk)

(There's also a footnote about "brew on Tuesday" in the chore days rhyme, that he suggests is getting the weekend started early but historically probably refers to the age when beer (or hard cider), possibly watered down, was an everyday staple.)
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