I have been looking at how often and what we wash our clothes with.
Things that need washing daily: underwear, socks, workout clothes, and anything that gets dirty or sweaty. Your work clothes, suits, shirts, and t-shirts, i. e. those that don’t touch the skin, might be worn 2-4 times before washing or dry cleaning. I find that things which need to be hand-washed can often be worn twice, such as dress blouses and tights. Coats can be dry cleaned once or twice a season, and certainly before going into summer storage. Gloves, scarves, and hats can be laundered every couple of weeks. I read that jeans can go months without being washed, but that isn’t for me. I give them 4-5 wearings if they aren’t visibly dirty or smelly.
I used to use Tide but began to break out in a rash. I did find that Tide Sport took the gym bag, old sock, funky scent out of my son’s sweaty clothes.
So I also started investigating what detergents on the market today. I looked at Arm and Hammer, Persil, Gain, and All dye-free. I also looked at Seventh Generation, Sun and Earth, Mrs. Meyer’s, Method, Biokleen, and Puracy. Here is what I found:
Nellie’s Laundry Soda (Nellie’s Non-Toxic Vegan Powdered Laundry Detergent,) I was in Home Goods and saw this as I was waiting in the checkout line. I bought it in a little tin container which said 3.3 lbs would do 100 loads, and it was priced at less than $20. I love this! One little scoop cleans my clothes and S’s clothes. CLEAN! I pretreated bad stains on S’s shirts. I added fabric softener and everything was fine. No rashon me. No weird lingering odors. Completely clean.