I really love Arm & Hammer.

I would not buy any of the four. I use Tide or Persil. All Free and Clear for some family members.

I purposely excluded Tide and Persil because those two detergents are considered the more "premium" options. I wanted to see what people thought of the more "mid-tier" detergents instead.

I personally prefer Arm & Hammer, with Gain and All being close seconds. I tried Purex but never was a big fan of it.

Also, just curious, was All once owned by Unilever? Or was it Sun?

All was once owned by Unilever, and Sun bought it from them. Then Henkel bought Sun. Out of the liquids mentioned, I prefer Purex; but since I am in Canada I actually prefer Sunlight liquid laundry detergent which is also formerly Unilever and now Henkel.

https://www.sunlightcanada.ca/en/our-products/laundry/original-fresh/

Hey Greg, thank you for the information! I figured those two companies were involved just didn't know which order. I wonder why Sun sold their brands to Henkel? 🤔

A few years ago when I was still using liquids I bought a jug of Purex oxi and I was quite pleased that it totally removed a stain. A stain Arm & Hammer did not.

Hey elbits, I appreciate your input. I always love to hear people's thoughts and experiences about these products.

Everyone, please note what Apple_pie_order wrote above. The OP is doing marketing surveys. It would have been better if the OP had been transparent, but s/he is not. The OP has posted 11 “vote” posts so far on laundry detergents.

Uhm no I'm not, I'm just simply asking people's opinions about these things. What's the big deal??

It doesn't bother me if the OP is doing market surveys or not. I don't happen to think he/she is, but so what if they are.

There isn't a lot of activity on this forum recently and the only way a new laundrophile can get some pointers or insights is to ask here. Unless they dig around in the archives, but that can be arduous for some people to do. Some people had the misfortune of wanting to learn about laundry products and perhaps machines after the more active members moved on to other things.

Btw MWJ 90, I'm not a fan of any of those liquid detergents. Sorry. I do like Kirkland's unscented liquid detergent as well as the ALL liquid detergent variant sold at Costco. I've had much success with both of those detergents and I deal with some serious dirt and odors in my laundry room. DH really likes it when I use Tide w/OXI liquid on his clothes. It works well. It's rather highly fragranced though, so I only use it on his laundry when I'm feeling rather generous. But when I am, and I do, he always says this: My clothes smell great! It makes him happy. :-)

Well, I take that back...I used to 'think' I liked the liquid ALL in the blue bottle you show a photo of in your opening post. But what I found later was that the scent was strong and pleasant enough that one thought the clothing was clean all the way through. Things smelled so nice out of dryer. After a while, the smell of old body oils would come up and be more difficult to wash away during later wash cycles. So maybe for very lightly soiled clothing that one would be ok, but over time, the smells would catch up with you anyways, unless it was a garment that would be worn maybe twice in it's lifespan.

Hey SEA SEA, I truly appreciate your input. Thank you for commenting! :-)

btw just so everyone know I'm a 30-year-old African American male. Just recently married :-)

Congrats MWJ! Enjoy that newlywed glow! Just celebrated our getting large number anniversary recently. The time flies while you are having fun :-)

Hey SEA SEA, if I'm not mistaken, isn't Kirkland's detergent manufactured by Henkel the same company that owns All?

Aww I'm happy for you guys! SEA SEA, thank you for your kind words of encouragement. For the most part I've been blessed to meet some pretty nice people on this forum and I'm glad to have a space where we can discuss various cleaning products and ideas. I'm always looking to learn more.

I don't know who manufactures the Kirkland detergent, but I've felt for quite some time that it performs identical to Wisk. Did Henkle make Wisk? I can't remember. But, I find that the current unscented version works better than Wisk did and rinses better too, for me at least. I haven't tried the scented version of Kirkland, but I would assume it works the same.

Littlegreeny might know the answer to that question. I'm just guessing...

Nice to have you aboard MWJ. Ask away. That's how we all learned on here. I dove deep in the archives and found treasures of info from when the forum was very active. I would put things like "Tide detergent" or "smelly clean clothes", or whatever you come up with in the search box at the top of the page. Lots of great discussions came up and I scoured those to get to the bottom of my laundry issues.

I think Wisk was formally owned by Unilever then Sun and when Henkel bought Sun, they discontinued the Wisk brand... unfortunately ☹️

Oh ok. It's gets hard to keep up with all those corp takeovers!

I know, it's sad how many American companies are being bought by foreign manufacturers. Same applies to the appliance industry :(

I like your choice of options here.... MamaPinky use to say not every load of laundry requires a Top of the line detergent and I agree with her. I prefer Gain and Arm N Hammer in your list of choices. I have both and much much more.... we use to post pictures of our stashes here, that was a lot of fun to see

In the past I was a huge fan of Purex After The Rain scent, I just love that scent, Then as my luck would have it, I could not find it anywhere. Today in my local grocery store they had it!!! And in the big jugs... I might have jumped up and down a little....

MiMi, thank you so much for your comment! I'd have to look into that Purex scent. My two favorite Arm & Hammer detergents are the following:

1.) Clean and Simple
2.) Scentsations: Sun-kissed Flowers (which unfortunately is very hard to find at times)

As I mentioned earlier, Gain is my close second and All is right behind it. I want to try the All Odor Lift detergent next if I can find it.

Probably not relevant to the poll, but I would not use any of these simply because they are liquids. 19 years ago I discovered that it was using liquids that was making my towels retain a mildew smell when being washed in my FL Kenmore at the time. I had used All Free & Clear for years, and would also use liquid Tide.

On a side note, congratulations and years of bliss MWJ.

Yes, armjim makes an excellent point.

Liquid detergents and towels can be a mildewy combo. Not everyone will get this, and there used to be quite a few vocal posters here who would insist that was rubbish, but enough people do have this experience, even when using hot washes and additives, that I'd like for you (and anyone reading this post) to have a powder detergent on hand for hot water towel cycles so it doesn't happen to you.

Hey Armjim and SEA SEA, again I appreciate the insight. I've seen on other forums how people have complained about liquids being bad for machines and/or clothes. However, in my experience I can honestly say that I've never had any of those issues regarding smell and it's probably because I've always stuck with a traditional top loader with an agitator. Not that I have anything against Powdered detergents because I do believe they are better in some areas, but when it comes to liquid I just never had any of the issues that were mentioned. But like you guys said, everyone has different experiences depending on the machine and/or water conditions I suppose.

I use 7th Generation liquid for most loads, but the towels and sheets get the 7th Gen powder. I do not want optical brighteners or fragrance in any detergent I use, and the 7th Generation has neither of those. Truthfully, the 7th Gen doesn't wow me, but trying to find 0 fragrance, 0 OB detergents is no easy task these days, so I take what I can get.

I tried 4 different laundry detergents that were recommended on the ewg dot org site, before I found one I thought was effective. And it has no fragrance etc. It's Biokleen Free and Clear. What I especially like about it is it rinses out of the clothes very well leaving no fragrance behind. I do use white vinegar in the rinse too.

Costco's Kirkland Signature detergent was made by Henkel as of 2014 according to the SDSs available on their website. Their current formulation SDS does not list the manufacturer but I would assume it's still Henkel.

Kirkland Signature and All Plus from Costco are both excellent detergents and they relatively inexpensive, especially when on sale.

@porkchop_z5b_MI Tide Free & Gentle liquid does not contain optical brighteners or fragrance. I found it to clean much much better than Seventh Generation.

I appreciate the comments guys. Keep them coming. This is very useful information.

I'm not quite sure my comment was understood. The EWG site is an organization that searches all known publications on the safety of all the ingredients in products. They list all the ingredients on a product in their database. They rank them and grade them for safety. For instance, for

Biokleen Laundry Detergent

Biokleen

Here is a link to the page where they grade it. They give it an A and it has a list of the ingredients and what is known about each ingredient and it's affect on health. I've used the website to get a better idea of which product has what ingredients and if I want to expose us to that. It took me about a year to replace a lot of the products in my house, using the list and then trying different products. Because while they can tell you if it's safe, they don't tell you if it works well. I looked at reviews on Amazon to get an idea if people liked it and then chose 3-4 products off the list and bought those and compared them.

Biokleen did the best job of those that had a grade of A that I bought and tried.

I've thought about trying the Biokleen but it isn't easy to find locally. The Tide F&G isn't on the store shelves around here anymore, at least not where I shop -- the stores stopped carrying it.

I order mine from Amazon. I just looked and they have the powder that is 'free and clear' on Walmart and the liquid version that has a citrus scent and another scent but not the 'free and clear'.

Biokleen Free & Clear on Amazon

It's been 2 years since I made that switch so there may be other good choices on EWG too.

All the Tide detergents get a grade of D or lower. Some of the liquids get an F. Don't get me wrong, I used to use Tide and Arm & Hammer - when I was growing up we didn't know any better and we used Wisk all the time too. Wisk gets a grade of D and High Efficiency and with OXI - get an F. Some of the Arm & Hammer detergents get a grade of C and some of their liquids get a D.

And I still have leftover A&H in the house, I haven't used it in a long time. I still have a half a container of Tide, that I use very occasionally to spot treat a stain that won't come out. I'm sure if I studied other more natural methods to get stains out, I could do it without Tide, but I just don't have the time. I've started to a couple of times.

But it's hard to argue with a difference between an F grade and an A grade. And I don't go by the letter grade because there will be a selection that all have As and I read the description of the ingredients and what health issues they trigger and I try to get a product with as few ingredients that are a problem even in the A grade group. Not very many have NO ingredients that are questionable.

I am perfectly happy with the results I get with BioKleen. And I add white vinegar to the rinse, in a further attempt to rinse all the detergent out of the clothes. For now, that seems to be as good as I can.

MWJ '90, I got rid of a 6 year old Kenmore top load washer because I thought the water was not pumping out, because it smelled. I went and bought a Speed Queen top load and after a while it started to have the same stinky odor. Come to find out it was those liquid detergents. No particular brand because I used a few different ones. So I went back to powders and NO MORE STINK!!!

elbits, I'm happy to know you found the solution that works best for you. Again, I understand that everyone has different experiences based on different conditions.

Persil. I used this when I lived in the EU for 6 months. I find it at Walmart in the US.

I wouldn’t use any of the above. Gain has a botanicals that is much less perfumy. It is missing some enzymes that Tide has. Cleans ok if your clothes are not visibly dirty. Other than that it isn’t worth the money.