For many product types including those of the personal care variety, I've found that Amazon is consistently cheaper than Target. There's a Target barely 5 minutes from our house but like most stores and most things, a few minutes spent doing price comparisons on brand name products can save money. Something needed immediately is a different matter. Otherwise, next day delivery (as we experience on almost all orders) is as convenient as need be.

I think it's the scents themselves that deaden or interfere with people's sense of smell. My youngest sister loves scented everything, and loves fragrances that I find repulsive. She's not a smoker and lives in a very dry climate. She's spent loads of money on expensive perfumes, candles and soaps., and when she sends me hand me downs, I need to launder them several times before the fragrance goes away.

Every time I see those commercials for Downy scented wash additives, it grosses me out a little.

And if you want unscented dryer softeners, try felted wool balls - they don't leave any residue on fabrics like dryer sheets do.

My husband and I call the cleaning products aisle at the supermarket the Super Fund aisle because it should qualify for a chemical spill clean up. I am allergic to the smell of chemical fragrance AND to essential oil fragrances. Mrs. Myers is the worst offender. I still wear an N95 mask when I go shopping because the scents will trigger a terrible asthma attack.

I live in NYC so have a lot of choices. I can imagine it is really hard to find things rurally and you'll need to shop online. Instead of going to a particular site to search, do a google shopping search for a particular product and see where you can find the best price.

I use Ecos unscented dish soap simply because that is what they carry at my corner market. Here is a 128 oz bottle at Staples for $25. That should last a very long time. These products tend to suds much less. But don't let that fool you in to thinking that you need more. It is still cleaning even if there are not tons of foam.

Yes, scented products are incredibly cheap because they are made with horrifying chemicals. Most scent free products are more expensive. Some of it is just green marketing. I don't always find that they work particularly well either, but after 20 years I've gotten used to the lack of shine. And, I have no choice.

I hang my clothes outside and have for my entire life. When my son was in his teens and we lived near Ithaca, NY (weeks sometimes without seeing the sun), I did have a dryer but none after that until I built this small house in a very small town in 2021 for my last years. (Occurred to me, that I might be laid up or in my last days--which I hope I'll spend in my house--and someone will need to do my laundry, so......) I have a stacked washer/dryer, but I never use the dryer and still hang my clothes outside, actually on the screened in porch. I really don't like dryers. Aside from their being expensive to use/run, I hated the wrinkles in my linen sheets the one time I used it. Never again.

But when I'm outside working in the yard, I can smell the scented stuff two neighbors use in their dryers when they're on. Even at a distance, it turns my stomach.

Also hard to find products without sodium laurate (foaming agent). I think it's because people don't believe a non-foaming product can clean.

I don't mind fruity scents but floral scented products give me migraine-like headaches. My DD used to use those scented plug in devices that smell up your whole house and when we stayed with her on visits it was hellish. To her credit, she didn't mind if I unplugged them while we were there.

Me, I've always preferred the smell of fresh air in my home.

I’m also okay with citrus scents but would prefer to not have most floral scents - so over used - although I’m not allergic to or repulsed by most scents, and rather enjoy sampling my way through the luxury fragrances at Ulta or Sephora.

I also get frustrated by the lack of fragrance free items. So few health and beauty products that are fragrance free. Luckily most are just lightly scented. I do see reviews sometimes of fragrance free items where people gripe that they smell like paint and I'm like "well, hello, that's what the chemicals smell like that makes the product" so they can't win for losing sometimes. I think they sometimes use the scent to mask the real smell of the chemicals. BUT, why can't they just put a small amount of scent? I bought some Persil laundry detergent and OMG the smell was horrible. I wouldn't even wash the dog stuff in it, it was that strong! I'm currently using the Seventh Generation fragrance free laundry detergent and have found that it's one of the few things I'm not allergic to!

BTW, as far as I know, the Dawn dish soap has always had a scent. I do think that the different versions they have come up with smell different from the original regular strength one. It doesn't bother me too much. I use it a lot to remove grease spots from my clothing, it's really the only thing that I can count on the get rid of grease stains. Works great for that!

I fully agree about how just awful are all of these scented products. So many people are enveloped in a miasmic vapor of laundry, cosmetic and household cleaner smells. It comes together on them in one awful combined stench.

If someone washes their scented clothes in my washer, the scent lingers in everything that gets washed in that washer for the next several loads, just by way of the residual stench in the laundry products that were used, previously.

One way that I have managed to avoid so many is really simple.

I just dont buy them, scented or unscented.

There are so many things that people think are necessary but they really are not. We, collectively , purchase and pour down the drain, douse our bodies, and clean our homes with millions of gallons of this awful stuff everyday. I am here to attest to the fact that most of that in not at all necessary to live a heallthy and clean life in a clean home.

Just stop buying all that stufff!!

There must be a place in hell for those atrocious plug in scents. That smell permeates EVERYTHING in your house.,,,EVERYTHING!!!! It even lingers on your kids.

I can hardly buy anything from the resell stores anymore because they treat the donated items with something perfumy that simply will NOT wash out. Sure it must be a mess of stuff that they get donated and I dont know how they keep it from spreading vermin and disease. But, whatever it is does NOT have to be perfumy!

I agree with OP....I detest all these darned smellls .

Scented candles are among the worst offenders. Gawd! I hate them!

And, now that Fall is coming, the nauseating stench of those scented pine cones greets the nose even at the grocery stores where they hawk these dammed things. They are so offensive!!

You dont have to have an allergy to be offended by these things. I dont have an allergy, I just hate these dammed perfumes! UGH!

I can tell which way the wind is blowing by the smell of laundry prouducts coming from the dryer vents. I recognize who uses what smell.

I also use the dryer very, very sparingly and have the advantage of screened porch where I hang them. They smell only of clean air!!!! how nice!

I have read that even unscented products can have scent in them that you might not register as perfume , to mask the smell of the actutal chemicals in the product.

" the smell of fresh air "

That's very variable, depending on where you live. "Fresh air" smells like whatever is around you at that time. For me, for instance, the smell of "fresh air" in the spring is the smell of lots of fertilizer.

I constantly wonder about this, and I think the people who like all the scent are heavy smokers and people who live in very damp, moldy places.

I'm neither of these -- I've literally never smoked a cigarette in my whole life, and while we have plenty of rain in the South, I don't have dampness or mold in my house. I used to have trouble with dampness in my classroom, but never in my home. Yet I enjoy scented candles, and I'm rather ambivalent about scent in cleaners -- though I do associate citrus with clean.

I've found that Amazon is consistently cheaper than Target.

Oh, yeah -- unless it's on sale, Target is not a bargain place.

This is a little off topic, but if you're over 55+ you can get 20% off most anything at Walgreen's on the first Tuesday of the month -- no prescriptions, no sale items. My husband and I keep a little list and try to take advantage of that deal. OTC meds, vitamins, sodas, snacks.

Right now, our "Fresh air" smells very much like low tide...It really stinks. I have the doors and windows closed. We live just a block from the bay and are surrounded by tidal marshes.

seagrass_CapeCod

FYI, many people use much more laundry detergent than necessary, especially if they have a newer machine that’s labeled “HE compatible”. Research (not mine) tells us that. The detergent companies thank you though. I use one tablespoon of laundry detergent per regular load. Works for me.

Another FYI: dryer balls = fabric softener. Plus they shorten the time needed to dry a load. REAL dryer balls are pure wool. I buy a couple of skeins of fisherman’s wool and wrap balls about the size of tennis balls. Clearly I don’t trust all sellers to be honest about what they use to make them. A dozen balls in the dryer will last me at least 2 years.

We live on a barrier island, our fresh air often smells like low tide too, seagrass.

There's no way 1 tablespoon of detergent is sufficient over here for the full loads I run, and with the unsoftened well water. I routinely use 4 tablespoons for a full load, plus 2 tablespoons of STPP.

I've never understood the logic that purports dryer balls doing anything useful. If they absorb some moisture from the clothes (which aren't saturated dripping wet when they go in so how much absorption can effectively occur?), the damp balls are inside the dryer drum with the clothes and thus any absorbed moisture remains in the drum environment to be dried out, evaporated and dispersed through the exhaust airflow. Does the drying cycle end with the clothes fully dry and the balls remain saturated damp with absorbed moisture? Or does the machine run until everything inside the drum is dry, balls included?

IMPE, the balls do not absorb anything, they just enhance the tumbling action. I mainly use them for large bulky items like fitted sheets, comforters and slipcovers, along with towels.

If there is moisture left in the wool balls, it apparently dries out before using them again. I do not leave them in the dryer.

We wash loads of a size one would expect of a two person household. One tablespoon of a high quality HE powder is sufficient as mentioned above, or with another machine at another location, liquid at about halfway to the lowest mark. Our water isn't from a well in either spot but it's hard in both places. Very hard in one, to the point that the dishwasher accumulates visible hard water deposits.

We use no fabric softener and program wash loads to have an extra rinse at the end. Detergent odor is minimal and almost not detectible from our freshly washed clean laundry.

For household cleaning products, we use cleaners minimally and stick to either Dawn or vinegar. For the dirty spots in a bathroom needing extra attention, nothing beats products with bleach. They smell like bleach (an odor I like) and the odor usually disperses in 30 minutes or less.

I don't think that the balls are supposed to absorb water. They are supposed to work like a natural fabric softener and in my experience they help with the static also.

Dadoes, if you tossed a dry bath towel into the dryer with a load of wet clothing, the load would dry somewhat more quickly. The towel might absorb a bit of wash water, but would be dry by the time the rest of the load was dry.

Dryer balls may absorb a bit of moisture as they are tossed about in the dryer, but that is not their function. The balls cause the load to toss about rather than becoming a huge lump of wet clothes being flipped like flapjacks. They stir instead of flip. More surfaces of the clothing are exposed to the heat. This also helps clothing have fewer wrinkles (if you take them out of the dryer in a timely manner).

I would never leave something wet in the dryer. They are completely dry when the load is done. I never remove them from the dryer.

Due to dermatitis I use the Seventh Generation ( with NO fragrance) products for washing dishes and doing cleaning. I have bought them from Amazon and Target.

Dryers have baffles affixed to the circumference of the drum which function to flip and toss and separate the tumbling items. There may be a belief that balls help with a bulky item such as a comforter, but they just get embedded in the rolled-up item or ride around the exterior of the roll. I've never employed dryer balls in any dryer I've used (which is a count of six at various locations between parents, grandmother, and self).

What really helps with bulky items is a dryer that periodically reverses the tumble direction but those are rare. Philco had one in the mid/late 1960s. GE had a couple in the early 2000s. Fisher & Paykel had a reversing *toploading* dryer (which is what I have) on the market from 2004 to approx 2010. I believe Miele and Bosch and perhaps Asko had or have models with reverse tumble.

Whirlpool had dryers with multiple *tumble speeds* for a few years in the 1970s ... lower speed for lightweight sheer/synthetic items, regular for normal clothes, faster for sheets & blankets. Frigidare also had one with two tumble speeds in the 1960s.

But anyway ... all this is off-topic from scented products.

Although that could also be brought in ... being that Kenmore and GE (maybe others) had dryers that took a little bottle of a scented "freshening" liquid that slowly evaporated and dispersed through the clothes during operation.

If you've never used dryer balls, how do you know they don't work and get embedded or stay on the exterior? I just pulled a load of towels and another of sheets out of the dryer today and everything was nicely fluffed, the wool balls were mixed in with the items. I use 4 per load.

To be fair, I have had issues if I didn't untangle fitted sheets before I placed them in the dryer. They do sometimes get tangled in the washer.

FWIW, it's been a long standing tip for many years to place tennis balls in the dryer with bulky items like comforters.

I have the wool dryer balls, set of 3. I don't really think they do anything as far as static goes, but they do seem to keep things fluffed up inside the dryer. They don't get wet, or if they do they're completely dry by the time the cycle is finished.

DD and I live in different states. We both use the same laundry detergent - Tide HE unscented. Mine smells like nothing. Her’s smell very strongly of incense. She thought the first time was a fluke. But it also happened with the next jug. We are both puzzled.

I had a washing machine repairman once tell me that if I rub the soapy water in the washer between my fingers, it should feel slick but not slimy. If it feels slimy, then you are using too much detergent. He, of course, told me this almost all washers were top-load. Good luck using that test with a front load washer. I use about 1 Tblsp of detergent.

Oh, I love love love the smell of clean laundry. Smells are also stronger in warmer temps, so keep your house temperature lower if smells are an issue. The only smell I really dislike is patchouli. It’s disgusting. And I live on a farm.

I love the smell of clean--line dried--laundry washed with no scented soap. Artificial scents of any sort absolutely disgust me--artificial maple syrup is the absolute worst for me though grape and strawberry are close rivals in foods. A friend once brought a store bought cake or pie made with artificial maple syrup to a small friends pot luck at my home, and it was all I could do to get through the evening with the smell in the room.

But good perfume, real flowers I'm fine with though I like some more than others. And I do (still) like patchouli though I don't use it personally.

I love the smell of patchouli! My husband uses a patchouli scented soap, makes the bathroom smell nice. It is very lightly scented though, I only just get a whiff of it.

I'm fine with essential oils. It's the artificial scents I can't abide.

I just went to buy a bottle of Dawn and now they are all marked with a yellow label that says "new clean scent". UGH! So they have changed the scent of Dawn and IMHO not for the better. I had no problem with what it used to smell like, it was just kind of clean smelling before but now the new clean scent kind of smells like powder similar to all the "linen" scents out there. It isn't horrible but "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as I like to say! UGH!

Yes, I phoned them and the rep told me they had changed the scent about 8 months ago. I've quit using the product after many, many years. And I told her I would.

The worst is fabric softener sheets. Also I decided to try All, and I'll use up what I have, but it's too smelly.

There's All Small & Mighty unscented - I've used it often - it has zero smell, and it's concentrated so you don't have to buy a huge jug.

The key for the All and for all other products are the words "free and clear," which means completely free of fragrance. That's what I use.

Yeah, most detergent lines have a "free and clear" and they are fragrance free. Although I have noticed that dish liquids will say "free and clear" but that doesn't always mean they are free of fragrance which is weird to me! You have to make sure it actually says that it is fragrance free such as Seventh Generation and I think maybe Method?

bpath, I have used Dove soap for decades and always enjoyed its delicate and light scent. Then, some time ago, I noticed that it seems to have changed. While it is not at nose bleed Irish Spring level of scent, it is different and considerably more noticable.

Much the same with Dawn . When I first noticed the scent seemed to be enhanced I thought that maybe I was just imagining it. But, something changed. While I dont find that it lingers on my dishes, I do find that it has something different about it.

I uesd to use Spic n .Span in my cleaning. I had stopped buying it when I stopped buying many other cleaners and products as well. But I needed to clean something and bought some. The odor was so strong that everything that it touched stayed heavily perfume for days! I decided that I would only use it to clean outdoor things and then never buy it again.

One result of these odors driving me away from products is that I have found that I can have a clean house and personal hygiene and NOT buy all that stuff!! There is no much pure nonsense in so much of what the American public buys.

I am with you and I detest these chemical odors. I share this same distaste for these perfumes with my friends who also avoid them.

At this time of year we get assualted with the awful odor of those scented pine cones as we enter so many groceries and craft stores. They make me want to get away as soon as possible! Why do people buy these dreadful things? Pine cones! They are buying pine cones! Who would have thought a market to sell pine cones?!! Stinky smelly pine cones! Americans will buy any nonsense!

Free and Clear detergents may be free of added perfumes and dyes, but they are not necessarily free of other troublesome ingredients such as optical brighteners. Laundry forum has good thread on OBs and laundry detergent ingredients.

The worst offender in the misleading labeling of dish soap is Palmolive, IME. This is scented, and it's not made apparent in the labeling...

Carol, I agree 100% about Palmolive. They make a fragrance free version, and it has a tiny blue banner under the "Pure and Clear" that says fragrance free. Could they make it any smaller?

https://www.target.com/p/palmolive-ultra-pure-clear-liquid-dish-soap-detergent-fragrance-free-32-5-fl-oz/-/A-78056165#lnk=sametab

I use All Free & Clear laundry detergent and All Free & Clear dryer sheets.

mxk3, I think that Optical Brighteners is what I'm extremely allergic to. At least that was what was in the Cheer that gave me a horrible reaction and so I have avoided laundry detergents that have OBs.

I've been researching washers for a friend and just read on another forum that a lot of the newer washers don't clean well enough and the stinky detergents are meant to cover up the smell they can't eliminate. I don't know the truth of this, but it's an interesting standpoint.

I think new machines clean just fine if you follow the directions. There has been a history of funky smells from front loaders that are likely from using too much detergent. Now most recommend periodic cleaning by running bleach thru the system. I am careful to not use too mich soap and don’t use fabric softeners, but am always shocked by the suds created in that clean cycle. I also always use an extra rinse to make sure the soap is fuuly rinsed from the clothes.

Also use hot water, not cold; at the least warm.

The designated Normal cycle is the testing basis for energy ratings. It's restricted on hot water use for that reason. Hot is typically a mild warm, no longer full tap-hot temperature. Warm is typically lukewarm to cool, not a 50/50 mix of tap hot and tap cold as in the past. Electronic controls with temperature sensors also allow manufacturers to program a given temperature setting to be different on each cycle.

There's no need to be paranoid about a bit of sudsing. Just don't have it billowing out from the lid of a toploader or from the dispenser drawer of a frontloader. Detergent dosing insufficient to sequester laundry soils into the wash water for flushing away is much more likely to cause residue and odor than using a bit extra detergent. Think of the grease line in a sink of dirty, overwhelmed dishwater left to go cold overnight.

Show us you didn't read all the replies without saying you didn't read all the replies...

Happy so far with the Ecos dish soap recommended and found at Walmart.

Don’t start me ranting about scented garbage bags!

It's funny, I normally loathe scented trash bags, but lately I'm appreciating them a lot, since we are using them to clear out loads of wet, stinking detritus from Hurricane Helene.

The ones from Aldi smell like apples.

I use bar soap for the bath and shower and am ok with certain fragrances if they're not too strong. I was browsing in a boutique today and bought a bar of handmade soap that didn't smell strong at all when I sniffed it but on the way home in the car I thought uh-oh it's starting to bother me. Had to toss it when I got it home, I just couldn't take it. Total waste of money but oh well what can I do -- but what puzzles me is it didn't smell that strong in the store, I thought it would be ok.