homeright now

DSC_6553same room one year ago

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Clorox who just so happened to be a main character in our developing story and water woes here at the ‘farm’ in a post I was planning to write anyway.  All thoughts, opinions and stories represented in this post are my own. Carry on…

When you move to a new place it can be months before you notice some of the differences from your last house. It takes time to learn its quirks and work out the kinks.

I knew one thing when we moved to this dark little house with orange-colored wood floors–I needed as much white as possible to offset the shadows cast by the covered porches and amounts of wood around us.

I’ve become addicted to white walls and slipcovers, towels and sheets because they feel calm. When it comes to white slipcovers the most common question I am asked is “how in the world do you have white slipcovers with three teenage boys and a dog?”. And my answer:: Bleach! How in the world could I have any fabric in my house that couldn’t be bleached? White has become my friend!

Last August we moved to this fixer upper in the country and tried to be as normal as possible while renovating a kitchen. We moved in the white sofa, washed our clothes, got that green pool to turn blue, changed out that yellow toilet for a nice white one and used the mixer on the floor.

DSC_0078

There were small inconveniences.

It didn’t take long for us to realize our phones didn’t get good reception so we changed carriers. No biggie.

Our internet choices were almost non-existent so we use a combination of three different sources to get online. A big pain, but at least we have some options.

But when we used the water in this house, it smelled like metal blood. If you have no idea what metal blood water smells like then consider yourself blessed. Imagine turning on your shower and it smells like the water has gone through a filter of 3000 hot pennies. Then infused with the smell of blood concentrate. (hold on, I have to gag).

Our water reeked.

Meanwhile, we noticed our new, nice white toilet was getting dark stains at the water line and below. And my toilet cleaning standby (anything and everything made by Clorox) wasn’t making a difference. I’ve lived in 14 different houses and Clorox products have never failed me. I knew something weird was going on, this was not normal.

christmas

By the time New Year’s Day had rolled around last year, I had moved out my favorite sofa, the one with the white slipcover, to the basement. I could no longer get it clean and white.

I longed for the days of municipal water when towels were bright white and all was right with the world.

So finally in March, Chad ripped out the old water system and installed a new top of the line system. No more hot penny baths!

At first the smell was gone YES!

But nothing else much seemed to change.

Our white dishes and clothes & towels seemed to get dirtier looking with each wash. WHAT WAS GOING ON?!

muga mug still warm after going through the dishwasher! this is how clean my dishes were :{

So we broke down and had the water professionally tested and it turns out we have a huge amount of iron in our water. Expectant mothers need only take a sip of our water to get their weekly recommended iron. And really, we were told it wouldn’t hurt us. But my white towels were becoming dingy no matter how much Clorox Bleach I added and our new white toilet and dishes were slowly looking horrible.

laundry

washer drawer

See that “Max fill” thing up there? This is the little drawer to my washer and that’s the part is where I would pour in the bleach. After a few weeks at this house it turned dark and I realized our white clothes and towels were starting to look dingy. So I stopped using bleach. Not only that, but the place where I put the laundry soap was also turning orange. Do I stop using soap too? We’ve had this washer in six different homes and this is the first time those little compartments have been anything but white.

So once again, instead of getting to purchase something fun like outdoor patio furniture that you and I could sit on together one day, and I could style and put on Pinterest, we paid our hard-earned money for something you can’t see (almost) A water softening system!!!!

And I am SO HAPPY!

Because we can be normal again!

washerThe laundry room that isn’t done because we have to keep blowing our money on water filters, water softeners, truckloads of fresh water, not to mention braces, car repairs and groceries for three teenaged boys. The nerve.

Y’all, Chad just installed the water softener and I’ve already gone Clorox Wild cleaning everything. I soaked our dishes in a sinkful of our own water and Clorox Bleach and the water didn’t turn brown!! Our kitchen sink is white and I always noticed the water + bleach = brown water in the sink. Our dishes are white again! My towels are already starting to come back to life. And they are FLUFFY! I forgot that towels can be fluffy! Y’all fluffy towels are such a luxury! We’re rich! Yippie for soft water! Not to mention, my hair is soft now because our water is soft! I’m not getting old after all, it was just hard water!

I was jealous of all of you who have normal water. Who can use bleach freely without any issues. Whose towels are bright white, disinfected and fluffy, but now I have joined you! My house is fresh again.

I’m in the process of washing and disinfecting all of our whites in hot water with Clorox Regular Bleach (holding myself back from thinking I need to add in a whole bottle to make up for lost time–I don’t)!! Funny how you can get excited about the little things when you go without them for a while.

So thanks for putting up with my whining all this time. And I’ll write another post telling you how this water affected our pool, because it is craziness.

May the soft water be ever in our favor. Go forth and disinfect with confidence. I know I will.

PS, I’m working on a post about how this affected our pool too (remember how it turned brown/red?), in case anyone is wondering or going through the same thing. So part two of this story will come next week.

FYI:

*we purchased this water softener

*and this whole house filtration system