tl;dr Only chlorine bleach and certain washers with a "sanitize" setting reliably sanitize laundry. With bleach you have to make sure you add it to the water a

tl;dr Only chlorine bleach and certain washers with a "sanitize" setting reliably sanitize laundry. With bleach you have to make sure you add it to the water at the right time which a malfunctioning dispenser can fail to do (and you might not realize it), but apart from that it works reliably and even with cold water. A "sanitize" setting can get similar results but it depends on the machine; her neighbor's didn't work as well as hers. Unfortunately non-chlorine bleach and "sanitizer" additives do not reliably sanitize. The obsessiveness of the post can given the impression that this is someone who's a germaphobe, but she actually notes that it's not necessary to kill germs most of the time. She's just motivated to figure out how to effectively sanitize in the cases where you want to do it, like a household illness or cloths used to wipe up raw chicken.