Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Laundry Detergent, Bleach, OxiClean, and Pre-Treaters

DETERGENT

Today, I spent WAY too many hours researching laundry detergent and enzymes. I also may or may not have bought a $30 Consumer Reports subscription just so I could read their laundry detergent recommendations. I also may have ordered some chemicals from a bulk supplier so I can run some further experiments on my laundry. Yes, I have issues. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I actually found out a few pretty important things about laundry today, and I know you're just dying to find out what they are. So here goes...

The most basic purpose of soap/detergent is to remove oils and fats. We all know that, right? Once you wash away the oils with soap and water, dirt and other stains rinse away more easily. But here's what I didn't fully realize... That only works in WARM water. If you put fat into cold water, the fat hardens - which makes it more difficult to remove with plain old soap or detergent. To fix this problem, manufacturers add an enzyme called lipase that breaks apart oils, enabling detergents to effectively rinse away fats in cold water.

ENZYMES

Five other enzymes are common in laundry detergent - protease for protein stains (blood), cellulase for cellulose stains (grass), amylase for starch stains (gravy), mannanase for food gums (salad dressing), and pectinase for pectin stains (tomato sauce).

Problem is, manufacturers don't normally advertise which enzymes (if any) they add to their products. And even for products advertised as "biological" or "with enzymes", most manufacturers only use one or two of these enzymes. I haven't found any formulations that include all 6. With a little research, you can hunt down their ingredient lists, but you still won't know how much of each enzyme they use. So looking at the ingredient list is a good first step to determine a detergent's effectiveness, but it's no substitute for old-fashioned experimentation.

FYI - Consumer Reports top-rated detergent contains all the above enzymes except pectinase. Persil ProClean 2in1 received a top score of 85 out of 100. It ain't cheap, but right now, Target is running a special that brings the price down to a reasonable 17¢ per load.

Side note - make sure you buy the correct product. Persil has several similarly-named products, and they didn't all score so high.

For years, I've happily used dollar store detergents, and before that I made my own laundry soap - none of which contain enzymes. But I'm willing to shell out a few bucks to see how the other half lives. My favorite cheap laundry detergent, LA's Awesome (which really IS awesome), costs a mere 3¢ per load. But if Persil works as well as Consumer Reports says, I'd definitely consider keeping two laundry detergents - a cheap one for everyday use and an expensive one for extra cleaning power.

Consumer Reports also found detergents that contain oxygen bleach (OxiClean) are worthless. Buy your bleach separately, and add it yourself. That brings me to part 3 of this epic.

LAUNDRY ADDITIVES

According to America's Test Kitchen, no laundry stain pre-treater is effective on all kinds of stains. The only pre-treatment that works on everything is a soak in an oxygen bleach like OxiClean. You can watch the whole segment here.

For about a year, I've been giving my most soiled laundry an overnight soak in oxygen bleach, and it works like a charm. I no longer buy laundry pre-treater, and I don't miss it. I already wrote about whether OxiClean is more effective than generic oxygen bleach (it is) and whether pure sodium percarbonate bleaches better than OxiClean (it does). In fact, I like sodium percarbonate (the active ingredient in OxiClean) so much, I stopped buying regular chlorine bleach. Although I do love these new Clorox bleach crystals if you absolutely need chlorine bleach.

But we have a problem :( Remember those enzymes we talked about? They work best at a neutral pH. Unfortunately, bleach raises the pH of your water. A lot. That goes for chlorine bleach AND for oxygen bleach. So if you've just spent a ton of money on detergent with fancy enzymes, the last thing you want to do is add bleach or OxiClean. It's like a black fly in your chardonnay. You EITHER get the stain-fighting power of all those enzymes OR you get the stain-fighting power of bleach. But you can't have both. Or can you?

No really. You can't. At least not at the same time. So if you have REALLY soiled laundry, you'll want to soak it with some enzyme detergent for at least an hour before you add the oxygen bleach. That will give the enzymes in the detergent a chance to dissolve the stain before the bleach goes to work removing any discoloration. 

SUMMARY

Is that more than you ever wanted to know about laundry detergent? Prolly. But just think how you can impress all your friends at your next dinner party. 

Here's the bottom line...

Best detergent is Persil ProClean 2in1

Best cheap detergent is LA's Awesome

The only laundry additive you need is sodium percarbonate (the active ingredient in OxiClean)

HAPPY LAUNDERING!