One of the best things about working at Wirecutter is having access to exceptionally discerning experts on a wide range of topics. Have a mold problem in your house? Liam McCabe is just a Slack message away. Want to revive a pilly sweater? Zoe Vanderweide’s got you.
And when it comes to laundry, Andrea Barnes is the preeminent expert on getting things clean. Even as someone who has been knee-deep in cleaning for years now, I’m always learning something new from Andrea about the chemistry of laundry detergents and how the ingredients in each formula work together to get stains and odors out of clothing.
She explained to me, for example, that adding a scoop of borax to a load of laundry with Mrs. Meyer’s detergent was essentially the same as using Tide Free & Gentle. Since the Tide formula includes sodium borate (aka borax), and Mrs. Meyer’s leaves it out, I could simply switch to Tide Free & Gentle and skip the extra step.
Another life-changing recommendation from Andrea: Ditch the bottle of stain remover and fill up a spray bottle with Tide Free & Gentle instead.
When I tell you that my clothes have never been cleaner, I’m saying so without a touch of hyperbole. I promise this is not a Tide fan page. But when something really works, it’s hard to ignore the evidence.
A good spritz of Tide Free & Gentle before laundering has so far successfully eliminated stubborn foundation on the collar of a white button-down, tomato sauce splattered on my favorite sweatshirt, burger grease on my fiancé’s puffy jacket, and ashes on a pair of pants.
My go-to method (confirmed by Andrea) is to douse the stain in Tide Free & Gentle, give it a gentle scrub with a stain brush to ensure full saturation and to encourage stain lifting, and then wash it up to three days later.
Tide Free & Gentle is one of the top picks in our stain remover guide. “Of the many stain removers we tested,” Andrea writes, “including a few designed specifically for oil and grease stains, nothing worked as well on stubborn oily stains as soaking garments in a solution of warm water and Tide Free & Gentle Liquid Laundry Detergent.”
This soaking method, Andrea writes, “returned seemingly unsalvageable items back to their previous, pristine state” and even removed pizza-grease stains from her daughter’s dress that had been through at least four or five wash-and-dry cycles.
It’s such an effective stain remover due to surfactants in the formula that lift soils off surfaces, as well as enzymes that target specific proteins. Those components break down a host of common stains, such as grease, grass, blood, chocolate, and wine.
It even works to remove stains and pet odors from upholstery and rugs. I’ve taken to pretreating stains on furniture and on washable rugs, and I can literally see it working in real time to lift messes from surfaces.
It doesn’t matter how much training or precautions are put in place: Animals have accidents. My dog Ozzie, for instance, is prone to a defiant piddle when the vacuum comes out, and he loves to sneak into the living room in the middle of the night for an illicit number two. I’ve been locked in what feels like a constant battle with urine odors since he was a puppy.
Luckily, Tide Free & Gentle really goes to town on those soiled spots, and since it’s unscented, I can really tell if the odor has come out of something. To get the splotches and odors out for good, I either run the rugs through a wash cycle or whip out my Bissell Little Green Pet Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner. I use a few drops of Tide Free & Gentle and water as the cleaning solution, and it works like a charm.
As someone with sensitivities and allergies to lots of fragrances, I’ve been trying to cut back on scented cleaners, so the lack of fragrance in Tide Free & Gentle is another huge plus for my personal well-being. In a landscape plagued by unnecessarily scented cleaning products, it’s such a relief not to sneeze up a storm while I’m trying to get a stain out of my shirt.
Tide Free & Gentle is not a one-size-fits-all solution, though, as there are some types of stains that it doesn’t remove as well as one of our other top picks, Amodex Ink & Stain Remover. While Tide Free & Gentle works fabulously on grease, grass, and odors, it’s not as effective at removing ink or blood as Amodex. Andrea recommends having both on hand for tackling a whole host of stains, so you’re never left in the lurch.
It might take a few tries, too, if you’re pretreating with liquid detergent like Tide Free & Gentle. It’s worth trying to soak items before washing, though; you can do so by filling the drum of your washing machine with warm water and detergent and then letting the clothing sit for an hour or so before washing.
I remain amazed, though, by the powers of Tide Free & Gentle. After years of so-so results with “natural” laundry detergents and less-than stain removers, I’ve entered a new era of squeaky-clean clothes. And I didn’t even need to leave my laundry room to get there.
This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Maxine Builder.
