Xtra Laundry Detergent – Required EXTRA

October 31, 2008

I’ve been doing laundry for at least a dozen years. I’ve developed a male perspective on how clothes should be washed and therefore am prone to ruining some of the weaker fabrics in my ensemble, but they were going to be culled from the herd anyway.

To that end, I’m not a Woolite guy or even a Tide super care guy. I go with the laundry detergent that is on sale and promises to get my stuff clean.

Xtra Laundry Detergent is one of those brands. I also like Arm&Hammer (mostly because what’s better than a hammer for slamming bad stains out of clothing, but I digress.

So I’ve been using Xtra for a while and only realized today that this stuff isn’t really worth the effort it takes to lift the bottle. For about 2/3 the price of the ‘real’ brands, Xtra requires me to add twice the amount of detergent.

Soiled clothes have been coming out of the washer still soiled when I use a regular ‘dose’ of detergent and I’ve had to waste water, time, energy and detergent to get them clean.

*I know this for a fact now that I’ve got a roommate who doesn’t use the Xtra brand. She uses a name-brand which will remain nameless. And her clothing (and the clothing of mine that slips into her laundry unannounced) gets clean in one pass.

So, if you’re all about being cheap in the supermarket aisles, go for the bottle of Xtra. But I warn you that the detergent will clean out your wallet in the long run because you’ll be doing twice as much laundry in the long run.

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