Weekender #241

I was in a carpool with my friend’s husband, Josh, who’s obsessed with laundry. We talked about it for 45 minutes. He’s deep in the Reddit r/laundry community, studying detergent chemistry and comparing products.

I learned two things: 1) everyone needs a husband like Josh and 2) I’ve been doing laundry wrong my entire life. Probably you have too.

Three quick wins you can implement today

1. Add citric acid to your rinse cycle

Stop using fabric softener. Add 1-2 teaspoons of citric acid crystals to your softener dispenser instead. Fabric softener leaves a waxy residue that clogs fibers, but citric acid removes detergent buildup and softens without the gunk. Buy it online cheap—it’s used in cooking.

2. Check your water hardness

Visit your town’s water department website and find your water hardness number. If it’s over 120 ppm, your detergent isn’t working. For example, where I live, West LA is 425 ppm. The goal is under 100 ppm.

3. If you have hard water, add sodium citrate

Add ¼ cup food-grade sodium citrate to the drum before clothes. In hard water, calcium and magnesium ions bind to your detergent and make it useless. Sodium citrate fixes that.

Why your clothes still smell like a thrift store

Regular detergent leaves residue. Buildup accumulates on fibers, trapping dirt, sweat, oils, and minerals. That’s the “old soap funk” smell.

Fabric softener makes it worse by adding more waxy coating. Natural detergents lack the enzymes to break down oils. Hard water (over 120 ppm) makes 68% of your detergent useless.

Learn to LOAD your laundry (the chemistry behind it)

The laundry Reddit community calls it LOAD. Four ingredients:

L – Lipase enzymes break down oils from your body and food.

O – Oxygen bleach removes stains and odors without harshness.

A – Ammonia boosts oily soil removal.

D – Detergency (surfactants) that wash everything away

No single product has all four. They’re chemically incompatible for storage. Lipase lives in powders, not liquids. There’s also DNase, which breaks down blood and sweat stains at the molecular level. It’s still fairly new to the market, so most detergents don’t have it yet. That’s why you need multiple products.

The products that actually work

For whites: Tide Powder. It has lipase and optical brighteners that make whites crisp.

For darks: Tide Liquid (no brighteners) + an enzyme booster like FEBU.

For delicates: Spa Day soak with a booster powder for 30 minutes before washing normally.

Every load: Citric acid crystals in the rinse cycle (1-2 teaspoons in the softener dispenser).

If you have hard water: Sodium citrate in the drum. You can find food-grade sodium citrate online, or some people use the citric acid as a substitute (though it’s slightly different chemistry).

Things you’re probably doing wrong

Using natural detergents

They lack the enzymes to break down oils. Your clothes aren’t getting clean.

Using fabric softener

It clogs towel fibers, kills moisture-wicking in athletic wear, and makes clothes smell worse because wax traps bacteria and odors. Stop using it. Use citric acid instead.

Not checking your water hardness

If you have hard water over 120 ppm, your detergent chemistry is completely compromised. This is probably why your clothes feel stiff and dingy.

Assuming one detergent does everything

Tide powder and Tide liquid do different jobs. Use them accordingly.

If you want to level up:

• Rehab Day for clothes with serious buildup or odor
• Enzyme boosters with DNase for blood stains
• Oxygen bleach for brightening without optical brighteners

Start with the three quick wins. Your clothes will feel and smell different immediately.

Your action plan

1. Buy citric acid crystals online ($5-10)
2. Check your water hardness
3. Get Tide powder for whites, Tide liquid for darks
4. Add citric acid to your next load’s rinse cycle
5. If you have hard water, grab sodium citrate

Don’t get overwhelmed. Just pick 1-2 things you want to improve on and go from there. I simply switched out my natural detergent to Tide and already found that made a huge improvement.

Thania (TA Sr. Content Mgr)

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📖 Read: Deep Work by Cal Newport

If you’ve been feeling distracted at work and can’t put your finger on why, Newport makes the case that the ability to focus deeply is becoming both rare and valuable. The book lays out a clear set of practices for building that focus into your daily life, with examples from people who actually pulled it off.

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Glen Powell plays a disowned heir who decides the only path back to the family fortune runs straight through the relatives in his way. The black comedy is sharper and meaner than the trailer lets on, and that’s exactly why it works.

🎧 Listen: Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers

The title track from her 2024 album, written about watching friends settle into their own chapters while you’re somewhere different in yours. Easy, lyrical, and the kind of song that fits a slow Sunday afternoon.

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Millie is a two-year-old Bernedoodle with the fluffiness of a teddy bear. She’s the queen of cuddles and the boss of belly rubs. When she’s not playing tag with the kids or flopping dramatically for attention, she’s perfecting her “puppy eyes” look (scientifically proven to melt hearts in 0.3 seconds). Basically, Millie is a lovable, tail-wagging, belly-rub-demanding member of the family with a PhD in adorableness.

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