LOL! You agonize over millicents on your BOM, then throw it all away on soap!
I have micotoxosis, which is a serious allergy to the toxins on ordinary household mold spores.
One of the most important sources is the bedding. The spores are activated by body heat and moisture, and you spend most of the night breathing in the spores. So I need to wash my entire bedding after each use.
This means I must do 4 to 6 complete loads of wash each day.
Fortunately, my landlord gave permission to do laundry in my apartment, otherwise the cost of a commercial laundromat would be prohibitive.
I need to ensure there is enough soap to remove the spores from the previous night, so I need to be sure to use enough soap to do the job. Unfortunately, I am also sensitive to the chemicals used in soap, so I need to minimize the amount as much as possible.
Fortunately, I have a number of ways of solving these conflicting demands.
The Maytag washer drains into the bathtub, so I can watch the exhaust and see how much soap remains after each rinse.
I can also touch the fluid and see how soapy it feels. Finally, if I get it wrong in either direction, I get very sick either from the mold toxins or from the chemicals, so I know immediately when I make a mistake, and what I did wrong.
After finding the trick about priming the washer, I did a study of all the available laundry detergents. After much effort, I found there were two inexpensive brands that worked well. One was XTRA 2X that cost around $3.67 in the local shops:
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The other was Arm & Hammer Essentials that was on sale recently for about $2.50:
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The recommended HE brands were much more expensive. Some were more than $25.00.
But they did not do any better than the two cheapest ones shown above.
So the money you spend on the HE soap is wasted. Most of the soap is also wasted, since nobody recommends filling the exit chamber before starting the wash, and you need to use a lot more soap. Since the amount trapped in the fabric is uncontrolled, you can get large variations in cleaning unless you use even more soap to compensate.
And for those who have chemical sensitivities, using a lot of soap can make things worse.
So every time you do a new BOM, think about the money you waste on the overpriced HE soap! And what this does to the environment.
Regards,
Mike