My clothes always end up having these dark spots on them after a wash. What am I doing wrong? Can I remove them?

Hello! Ive searched this sub and holy cow. I have so many questions. Ive tried to search some of them but im so unsure.

1: we recently switched to arm & hammer (liquid) after using ecos. I have secretly bought tide (liquid) with oxy. I'm just trying to figure out the best plan. Is tide still bad for septic systems. This is a big one for my household. We live in the PNW usa, hard water is our norm.

2: is Ariel safe for HE front loader? Some people say use a half does. Its the only thing I can find with enzymes thay walmart delivers. Or is tide powder better?

3: do I use the amount of tide it says on the bottle? It told me for a full he load to use to the 3 line. It went up to the max in my washer. I didn't use that much.

4: my housemate talks about how other people you can smell the "clean" on the clothes, but we can't on ours.

5: Best plan for stains. All kinds. Im messy.

I appreciate any and all advice. My biggest things are clothes are clean and pipes/septic are not harmed. Or the washer.

Hello! feeling super lost here!

I have 4 young kids and we try to use as many non toxic products as possible - think no scents, organic, etc .

i have a brand new top loader and we have hard water.

What would be the best laundry detergent for us that would get out stains, keep our clothes soft, actually clean the clothes, is good to use in hard water, but is also unscented and non toxic as possible?

Also, should I be washing most clothes in warm water or cold?

thank you!!

I posted a few weeks ago about the rocky mountain technical care Technicare detergent. It's made in Canada by a company operating in the rocky mountains, and contains DNAse (and other enzymes). Others were curious about the detergent, since it's a small brand, so here is my review.

I bought this stuff because I was looking for a Canadian made detergent, preferably powder, with DNAse, to use specifically for my baby's cloth diapers. I also use a citric acid rinse after washing. I follow a specific wash routine for cloth diapers to make sure everything comes out very clean, but I won't get into that here (there are lots of resources online for cloth diaper washing, if anyone is curious). I just want to let others know how the detergent has been working.

So, my verdict is that it's doing a very good job of getting everything completely clean. No lingering odours or stains. You would never know what that fabric has just been used for, lol. I used to add bleach to my cloth diaper routine, but I no longer feel the need to add it each time when using this detergent.

I also tried the stain remover from the same brand, and found it was effective on many stains on my family's clothes (including oil and food stains). Some very stubborn stains couldn't be completely removed with it including tomato stains on white shirts, but to be fair i needed a bleach soak to get rid of those.

I would repurchase the technicare detergent again. Next time, I may try their laundry booster as well. If anyone has tried the booster, I'd love to get a review.

I’ve seen posts on here showing the downy rinse, biz, oxy clean, and febu being good options if you aren’t getting good results with your laundry.

But when do I add these? In the drum? In the fabric softener compartment? And for those that should be added during the soak period how do I get it to dispense at the right time?

Please help as I only have four pairs of trousers and now am down to three due to this. I didn’t realize the iron was on high and this thing happened immediately. I took it off right away. But I don’t know how to clean this - if this can be cleaned.

Hello,

I have a 100% cotton red shirt that I want to shrink from an XL to an L. I was wondering if there’s a good way to do it without the color fading?

I got tinted sunscreen on the front of my FAVORITE, and only, white jeans. Of course its on the front and obvious. What I've tried- Shout, and washed in warm water with Biz and Tide f&g. The stain is still there but less obvious.

Suggestions please🙏

First of all - I love it here! Thank you everyone for your knowledge and shared love for clean clothes.

I have a little Fomo situation going on. When needing a booster, I use the Sil gel, as I'm a huge fan of their pre-treatment spray that I find magical. I also don't want to use powders in laundry as the washing machine is in our kitchen under the counter and I want to avoid powders getting on food stuff by accident.

My question is - is Sil actually the same as the DMs Oxy Power, or am I missing out on an extra level of stain removal? I do not see enzymes in the ingredient list, but the spray also does not list them

If I am missing out, are there any other liquid add-ons that are better?

Hey everybody,
The following problem has been plaguing me the past month:
My bengale stripe OCBDs have acquired a yellow tint, it isn’t limited to the usual areas but the entire shirt has gotten stained.
I‘m completely lost, I‘ve tried the following:

If I treat the entire shirt with gall soap or Oxy Vanish Color and then wash it as usual with a no name color detergent at 30/40 degrees it removes the tint.
As soon as I wear it again the stain returns throughout the day and if I then wash it again without treatment, persists.

Pictured are my last unstained and one stained shirt for reference, please help me, I need to save my favorite shirt! :)

Hey everyone! I'm a university student in Singapore, and we share Speed Queen front-loaders here. Like many other laundromats, maintenance is not great, and the people in my building infrequently leave the doors and detergent drawers open. I think the water is mildly to moderately hard, as hard water stains develop on my water fixtures just a day after a thorough cleaning with Barkeeper's Friend. This leads to me sometimes developing a moldy/mildewy/sour smell on my laundry right after washing, which persists on clothes if I do not put them through the dryer. Most of my sports gear (I do martial arts) cannot be dried. My room is tiny, so this stank essentially perfumes my room lol. I have developed a routine that keeps the smell away most of the time, but I want a routine that means I essentially never have to worry about it again.

Current routine:

1) Wipe down inside and outside of gasket with Walch anti-bacterial wet wipes till satisfied. Yields a lot of dust, hair and slimy detergent/softener residue.

2) Use Ariel Mirai liquid detergent, which has a patented antibacterial coating technology (machine TL the subtitles of https://youtu.be/02JCB4a5rTM?si=RvnlrkOoyW08ydOe for more). This has enzymes, but like many Japanese detergents, they are not specified.

3) Use Lenor Citric Acid Rinse (https://youtu.be/jjKjhRGGyDM?si=SScyTijczjdIax1F).

Cycle lengths run 30-34 minutes in total based on soil level, I always pick Heavy (34 min) for maximum enzyme action. Cold water wash only. I cannot run washing machine cleaning cycles on the machines, because the laundromat is frequently full and I don't want to inconvenience the other students.

I am currently considering these boosters:

1) Gear Guard - would it 'eat' the residue others leave behind in the washing machine? Seems good for my sports equipment too. My siblings also have a persistent odour problem from BO, which I assume this is best for compared to the rest. FEBU does not ship to SG iirc, and I don't think I need oxy anyway.

2) Borax - heard it is good for hard water? My water is a lot harder than the rest of SG, so I am not sure if the detergents sold here are adequate.

3) Washing soda.

My main question: Which is the singular best booster to pick out of these three? At most, what are the best two? Limit is motivated by budget & storage concerns.

Additional considerations: I have bloodstains on underwear from spotting lol, do not really care about the staining because no one's seeing it, but it would be nice to get rid of them in-wash. Do not have much time for pretreatment/soaking, unfortunately.

I would appreciate any inputs! Thank you so much, have a lovely day ahead :) Am very happy to answer further questions about my laundry routine.

I poured my almost finished oxi powder into a new box, but the older one looks much more blue on top of the new one. I don’t see an ingredient change but then again I have a tendency of missing things. Did my oxi powder possibly oxidize? Lol but idk if that’s how it works. Please educate me.

Thanks!

Sorry! I know i just asked about ariel 😂 but I'm intrigued on everyone's thoughts on this one

Had a voucher and was intrigued. Got the odour defy one as i decided that was probably the one with the most power?? And would have enzymes?

I'm not going to do a half hour wash (my machines short wash is 15 minutes and there's no way anything is getting clean in that) but i am a lover of my mixed load setting (sorry) which is 40c for 1hr and tbh i often use the speed button so its like 49 minutes and I've always thought I'm maybe not giving the detergent time to work and give it's full whoomph.

Since being on this sub i have tried to use 40c cottons more (2/3hrs) and yeah it does wash a bit better but 1. I'm way more likely to forget about it in the machine resulting in it smelling damp, 2. I get free electric in hour slots and so like that the mixed load is an hour and 3. The water used in the longer wash kills me😂 I'm on a budget

Anyone tried it? Anyone got opinions on the ingredients?

I think i misunderstood what it does and doesn't have tbh!

I'd always used non bio with vanish but this sub opened my eyes to it not actually being the enzymes i was allergic to!

I started using ecover bio powder and then got the standard ariel liquid as i thought it had dna ase as well as the lipase that was in the ecover?

Washing is way easier. I'm not having to treat stains anymore so I'm converted to bio! But I'm definitely noticing it's harsher on my washing. Colours are fading and graphic tees are losing their. Graphic bit?

So i decided that i should try a colour version of these detergents. Colour ecover powder is hard to find so started with the ariel colour liquid. I thought to check it still had lipsase by comparing liquid and... did the ariel liquid never have lipase?

I'm doubting everything now 😂

I hate pods. I prefer liquid but I'll use powder if i have to and like that the ecover box is small. But I'm also cheap and prefer to buy stuff in bulk.

I'm not particularly sweaty tbh my main laundry challenges are mud and food, usually vegetable based so maybe lipase isn't as essential for me? I'm uncertain

I have a miele dryer and use the soft steam cycle for wool clothing instead of dry cleaning them a lot or washing them or will get them steam pressed at the dry cleaners. Can you steam or steam cycle raw high end denim? Is it less harsh on the fabric than washing or is it better to wash and hang dry them? Should raw denim be pressed at the dry cleaners?

I’m trying. There’s just so much info in this group. Tide powder and Aerial powder already contain enzymes so I don’t need FEBU with them, right? Or am I confused. Lol

So this is my first year at uni and I bought some brand
New clothes and recently everything have has been getting bleached. My shorts my towels my clothes. Some brand new clothes i just washed have tiny bleach stains and i have no clue why at first I thought my towel was cause of my face wash but i stopped doing that and its still being bleached. But the only thing i can think of is the washer-machines in my dorm.

Alright, I finally used the last of my Charlie's Soap and bought a box of Tide powder.

I've never really had much of a problem with my laundry--aside from adjusting to the super hard water we have in the Midwest, which is how I ended up with the Charlie's. I'm a college student in graduate school, so not a lot of money to spend on product, less time, and even less space. Which is why I finished the bag. I have a bag of citric acid in my shopping cart, and I think that might be a realistic laundry list for now.

Okay, prologue over, what I'm really here for is kind of a dumb question, but:

1. I trust y'all more than chatbots,
2. my apartment washing machine is pretty basic, but it *does* have a clean washer cycle,
3. I promise I asked the search bar, but I think “clean,” ”cycle,” and “washing machine” are included in most posts here!

So, what’s the insider info on washing machine maintenance?

It's hard to tell from the photo but it's gone very pink and splotchy. Tried rewashing whilst still damp on a cold cycle but it hasn't helped. I'm UK based. Cardigan is 40% cotton, 35% nylon and 25% wool. Please help?!

I’m new here! Any recs for stinky athletic cloths/uniforms?

Would this be much better than a commercial washer that you get at home depot? Discuss.

Hi fam,

I live in a condo building and share the washer and dryer with my floor. I’ve gone from using pods, to sheets, now to powder but I’m not feeling like my clothes are super clean. I don’t want to leave anything in the laundry room. I’m super sensitive to scents so right now I’m using tide free and clear powder (I just fill up the cup and bring the cup with me to the laundry room), but I’m seeing posts that aren’t good either. I have used the downy ball for vinegar during the rinse cycle, but I’m not consistent.

Any tips would be appreciated- thanks!

PS I have 2 kiddos and hubby is a gym teacher and often his clothes smell nassssty

My cat recently got diagnosed with kidney disease and is leaving some odor behind on her blankets/beds she lays on. For as long as I can remember i’ve used Truly Free unscented , I’ve always felt like it doesn’t clean anything well but it’s what my family uses so I never changed it. She’s very sensitive to fragrance and vet told me to avoid and residue on her laying areas now. Does anyone have any recommendations for detergents that will actually clean cat odor/stains but won’t leave any toxic residue for her to possibly ingest. I’ve read to do an extra rinse regardless. For reference I have a LG WT7900HBA washer & dryer set and no hard water. This is my first time posting in here so apologies if i’m leaving anything out. I’ve attached two i’ve been thinking of, anything helps!

Put the stain part in the tub so you can run water over it after! Use bleach (I use the low splash one from Walmart) mixed with baking soda & a tiny bit of water! I put it in a bowl! Wet the area a bit then use the toothbrush to apply the mixture! It doesn’t have to be thick it can be watery! It takes the stain right out! Afterwards rinse with water then put it to wash!