I have been a loyal liquid Tide user for decades. I prefer the scent of Gain, but Tide does the job, has a milder smell, and doesn’t cause my daughter’s eczema to flair. My mom used Tide to clean our clothes when I was a kid, so perhaps that’s where my brand loyalty originated.
What’s your favorite laundry detergent? What’s more, what makes it your favorite?
In addition to the fact that Tide gets my family’s clothes clean, I also appreciate that the company that markets the popular laundry detergent, Procter and Gamble, offers coupons Tide. Let’s face it; laundry detergent is not cheap and Tide is among the most expensive on the market, so being able to access money-saving coupons is always a plus.
Ironically, for four years straight, I purchased a laundry detergent that nearly drove me to the poor house-—Dreft. My then newborn daughter’s pediatrician recommended that I wash all of her clothes in Dreft. That was before she was diagnosed with eczema. After her diagnosis, the doctor warned that I shouldn’t consider switching laundry detergents until my daughter’s symptoms subsided. For four years I washed all of my daughter’s clothes separately in Dreft and ran the rest of the household’s laundry in Tide. These days I use Tide Free and Gentle Liquid detergent and find that it does a decent job getting out some stains, but struggles to remove stubborn non-protein based ones.
Laundry detergent has come a long way since its inception in the 1920s. Back then, most people washed their clothes with soap flakes. Unfortunately, the flakes weren’t that effective and often dulled colors and made whites dingy-looking. In 1933, Procter and Gamble introduced Dreft to the world. It contained synthetic surfactants, which draw dirt out of clothing and suspends it in the water so it can’t reattach. Dreft did a good job cleaning clothes that were not heavily soiled, but stains were problematic for the gentle detergent. Ten years after it launched Dreft, Procter and Gamble debuted Tide. By then researchers had found a way to combine synthetic surfactants with other products that could combat and eliminate heavy duty dirt from clothing.
And the rest is cleaning history.