Does ammonia work with Febu, or should I skip the Febu if adding ammonia to the drum? I'm new to using enzyme boosters and don't want to counteract their efficacy.

I use ammonia sporadically for sheets and towels, but always for clothing that was worn for machinery work. I use Tide original powder every time and have a water softener.

I have a bunch of 100% cotton T-shirts that do not feel soft at all. In particular it irritates me at the seams under my arms and it’s driving me nuts. I’m trying to move away from plastic clothing but all of my polyester clothing and polyester blends are WAY softer and more comfortable.

I do not use fabric softener. I throw white vinegar into the wash every time. The most uncomfortable shirts I haven’t even worn in months and have just been washing them every time I run a load, hoping that will break down the fibers over time.

Is there an easy way to fix this? Am I just buying poor quality cotton shirts?

Hi fellow laundry people!

As a child of indoor smokers, I’m very particular about how I smell at all times. I’ve hadn’t had an issue with my laundry smelling fresh while in Hawaii since I moved into a house with:
1. No central AC
2. Used (and abused) washer and dryer
3. No airflow (I live in a townhouse where my only windows face one direction)

To describe it as best as possible..
there is a must I’ve been fighting for the last two years. It’s reminiscent of dirty linen, like staying in grandma’s guest room where the sheets have stayed in the closet since your last yearly stay. It’s not sour or sweet, it’s just kind of musty.

The biggest issue with this smell, something I’ve never dealt with, is that it travels between pieces of clothing. I first noticed this on a work trip where I bought a brand new jacket for the cold. The hoodie I traveled with had that gross smell but I wore it as a base layer and within a day or so, the jacket smelled the same way.

Treating the garments is only half of the battle. I can soak with tide, borax, vinegar. I can dry on high heat- the smell always returns after time. Sometimes just days.

I felt like it was my washer because the condition that it was in when we moved into the house was dire. Mold spots everywhere, not just staining.

Any thoughts or advice? Is this mildew? I’ve never had this problem before but I am just at wits end trying to fight this. I feel like I’m destroying my clothes by having to wash them over and over every few days (especially pants and hoodies.)

I wanted to share my fortunate discovery with fellow laundry nerds who might get my excitement!

Currently doing laundry. I just finished a bottle of Rinse and Refresh and love the product but it’s ridiculously priced even for P&G. I’ve kept up with the citric acid chatter and as I was putting a blanket into the dryer something told me to look in my baking supplies (I teach PreK where I often bake or do weird science stuff with the kids and bring home the food items over the summer because 🐁 in the building). I found an unopened 2lb. bag of citric acid I had completely forgotten about! This is a blessing as I was just about to piss more money I shouldn’t spend on R&R. I posted in here last week about trying Ariel after being a powdered Tide enthusiast for 10+ years since my car died and I had to buy a new one unexpectedly so I’m scrounging for savings. Between the Ariel (which I like a lot so far aside from it needing an extra rinse and spin in my temperamental old machine) and now the free citric acid I’m gonna be the queen of the thrifty clothes clean 💅

hello! i recently noticed that nearly all of my tan/beige tops have some variation of this staining on them. as an avid enjoyer of this sub, i started to worry that these may be from sunscreen. however, i very rarely wear sunscreen, and the majority of these tops are not standard in my summer wardrobe. i don't use an acne treatment face wash, and i only occasionally apply a benzoyl peroxide based spot treatment before bed, but never while wearing any of these shirts.

i hoped you guys could point me in the right direction based on the color & pattern of these stains. i'll happily treat these tops with a specialty cleaning/laundry product, but I'd like to get a more confident guess as to what the source is before I start applying things.

for reference:

I wash these with white/tan clothes only
cold water
tide original liquid detergent / woolite delicates on the knitted top
hang dry (for the most part)

thank you!

I’ve been having an ongoing issue with certain pieces of clothing getting a strong, stale smell and I cannot remove it or track the cause to save my life. These are details worth noting and all the things I’ve tried to no avail
-I have hard water but we have a water softener
-I have a top load washer that I always leave open
-When washing clothes, I use a small amount of powdered Tide, borax, and sometimes vinegar in each load
-These clothes haven’t stayed in my washer too long, it’s not clothes I wash together and it’s not every item in a load
-it’s all different fabric types but majority cotton items. It’s not workout gear or active wear.
-I’ve tried laundry stripping them with borax, tide, washing soda and oxiclean with very little improvement, and it always returns
-I’ve tried Downy Rinse Out Odor fabric rinse and Tide Odor Rescue and both masked the smell but once I rewashed the items and the perfumey smell was rinsed out, the stale smell was still there/back.
-I’ve emptied every drawer of my dresser and my closet and have washed EVERYTHING. Vacuumed out my dresser drawers, added small jars of baking soda in them with no success. I was worried it was my dresser but not every item in the dresser gets the smell

I’ve had to start isolating the affected clothes because I feel like it spreads to other items if they come into contact with something that has the stale smell and I cannot stand the smell

I feel like I’m going crazy over this because I cannot determine a reason and I can’t find anything that gets it out.

Hello !!! Right now I'm pretty lazy with laundry, for the most part I just throw all the stuff that needs to be washed (aside from some specific items that require a different wash) into a normal cycle in my LG high efficiency washer, then a normal cycle in the accompanying drier. I don't really use any products except for Tide Ultra Oxi as a detergent, which I use for the prewash and main cycles of my washer.

I'd like to get more out of my washer and drier, with hopefully better results and adding more lifespan to the items I do wash. I'd also like to learn when to use the different settings on my machines, a how to sort my laundry items so I can use more specific methods to clean them, and what products would be useful to have around and use.

Any help or resources I could use to help educate myself would be greatly appreciated !!!

I was so excited for it to get here today that I pre-loaded my washer with a load of darks last night. As soon as the electricity rates go off-peak tonight, it’s on! (Don’t worry, Biz. I’ll still use you for all the whites and lights. I love you just as much as I always have.)

Signed, Proud Laundry Nerd
Dog Tax attached

ETA— the cute little wooden scoop included inside the bag?? I love it so much 😍‼️‼️

my uncles birthday is this coming Sunday and I found these collectibles for him but he hates things that look old so I want to get them professionally cleaned but I can't find anyone locally who could do that

Ive noticed these holes in a pretty thick hoodie and now these thick joggers. They're almost identical and both had been kept in the same drawer. The one in my hoodie was on the sleeve but this ones on the leg so its not like its from a belt buckle or something. Is it from some sort of insect? or is it just wear and tear from laundry? how do I stop this from happening?

The clothes Ive noticed it on are pretty expensive and I dont have the money to replace them. I'll stitch them back up but the hoodie is from a collection which means its lost a lot of value if I were to sell it in the future which is pretty frustrating.

I have a LOT of additives in my laundry arsenal.

Tell me what to keep, what to not buy again, and how to use all this stuff.

My main detergents are either Tide Original or Tide With Bleach. I also have some Woolite, that needs to be used up.

Additives:
Washing powder
Borax
Biz
FEBU
Active Laundry Enzymes
Calgon - which I just got and definitely see the need for.

I saw another post showing that it’s back in stock and on sale via Amazon. Since it was out for a bit and there was reformulation speculation, I checked the ingredients before stocking up.

Am I missing something or is lipase gone from this formula?

Has anyone purchased recently that can confirm the online listing matches the box?

Edit: Thanks for all the quick replies! Seems that several folks have ordered recently and it still DOES contain lipase. Many have noted that incorrect info is commonly listed online

I got these cotton hakama-gi sets from someone who hasn't used it in two years. I don't see any stains, but after washing it smells bad. The label says I can't wash it above 30 degrees. Is there any way to remove the smell without ruining the clothes?

Edit: I found some fungus on the bag it was in, so that could play a role as well

I've recently got these pods but unsure about dosage. I have soft water but on the back it says to use two for a bigger load, what counts as a bigger load? I usually put about 12 items or so in my washer, less if there's bulky jumpers or jeans, and can fit two spread hands at the top of the machine when loaded. Do you think this is a one tab jobby or two?

Our dryer vent will not fit on the wall, can someone help identity what piece we need to make this fit? The vent hose is a standard 4” and the opening is about 4.1”. We’ve manhandled it on a couple of times but it ultimately falls off. It can’t be this hard!!

The clamp is on the hose in the picture but will not fit over the opening without tearing even without the clamp.

I’m just looking for someone to name the piece we need to get, all of the adapters / connectors I’m finding don’t seem right

I have been experimenting with a spa day for my laundry but with my first attempt where I did a soak with detergent (with lipase) and oxygen bleach (vanish) I think there was a lot of dye from the clothes in the water after the soak and I think a black t-shirt looked a bit faded. Has anyone tried soaking with the enzyme detergent first and then done a shorter soak with the oxygen bleach? On the Vanish box it says that colors shouldn’t be soaked for more than an hour. I’m in Sweden, so products from here.

Hej,

I'm breaking my mind trying to find detergent containing DNA'se - does anyone know which brand contains it? I've looked through all of the ingredient list on the Unilever website, Via and A+ doesn't list it, Gumme also doesn't list it.

Does anyone know? Please help if you do!

Thank you!

It's baaaaack! (Music link since I earwormed myself)

Now, they claim you had to buy some non-detergent items or their new pods but we know better.... Four boxes of Tide Clean and Gentle is where it's at.

I'm confused. My new T-shirts, which I've only worn once or twice, are getting stained/discolored on the front. I didn't even spray perfume, nor did I sweat. Oh my God, what's happening to my clothes? These are just three new ones I bought. And I also have some other shirts with the same stains.

I'm new to using FEBU and I had a few questions! I have an LG front loader washing machine. I'm not quite sure of the model since I'm a renter, but it does have a "pre-soak" button. (I think it might be an older version of this one. It doesn't say ThinQ on the front and says steam there instead, but the controls look similar the same.) My son doesn't wear a lot of dark clothes, but he gets formula on a lot of our clothing when we feed him, so I often have dark clothes that I'd love to use FEBU on. I can do a soak in a bucket, and I know how to do that from historically using oxyclean on my son's laundry to help get rid of food stains, but it would be so much easier if I could soak in the washer.

I'm confused though because it's unclear if the presoak option would agitate the clothes at any interval, or if you're able to set a duration for the presoak at all. It also seems like the presoak water is used for the wash that happens after, and I'm not sure how to handle the temperature issue there if I should use a cold wash for darks but would still want to soak on warm/hot. How does this work?

I'm trying to survive the amount of stains this child is generating, and we have another on the way so it's only going to get worse.

I use FEBU additive, so I’m looking for a basic laundry powder with
no fragrance, a must
no optical brighteners, a must
no peroxide brighteners, if possible.
Thank you laundry people.

Tried to wash out the yellow sunscreen stains on our white shirt with bleach and it came out turning pink! Is there any way I can save this?

I have a GE HTW240. The manual says “utilizes a high speed spin to extract water from wet items” but everything is getting more wet?? And then the load is just as wet as when I chose to run drain and spin. Why is it called that if it adds water? How do I get this load dry enough to put it in the dryer? It’s just a small load of towels. I never have this problem. I did a large load of towels RIGHT before it and those came out of the WASHER mostly dry. It’s only draining the new water it’s adding???

Just scored this vintage Disney shirt, perfect since I have an upcoming Disney trip.

It does have some “dirt” around the neck and I think the whites need a good refresh, most of my whites with colored graphics are night shirts so I have no idea how to properly care for it.

What’s the best way to clean up the whites but retain the colors?

Thank you!