Does Charlie's Soap Powder work for you?

[barkley1]

I am having a LOT of trouble with stains. Like, basically nothing comes out in the wash. so, either I am a laundry idiot (quite possible) or Charlie's Soap Powder lacks stain removal power. Mostly the stains we have are from food - not really dirt or grass, ink, blood or anything challenging like that. Just regular old food and/or food-related grease stains that show up after you pull it out of the dryer and you had no idea anything was even on it to begin with! How do you get this stuff out?

What is your experience with Charlie's? TIA!

[Melaine]

It works well for us, but I have heard very mixed opinions that seem to vary based on hardness/softness of water for Charlies. I have no idea how hard or soft my water is, but we like Charlie's and have used it exclusively for about a year. I do pre-treat most stains with spray 'n wash. I have had a couple of bad stains lately that I am going to use OxyClean on.

[lizzywednesday]

I liked Charlie's for a while, but have since switched to Rockin' Green, which I like much better.

I used to use the Charlie's pre-treater liquid spray (I think it's sold as an all-purpose cleaner) but the smell of whatever surfactants they use started to irritate my asthma, so I stopped. (Also some of the comments on Amazon started to worry me.)

I've also had the experience where Rockin' Green got something out of the fabric that Charlie's didn't. In some cases, it got stains out that had run through the dryer, so it sold me.

[hillview]

Love it!

[brittone2]

Love it!

:yeahthat: We've used it for cloth dipes and clothes for probably 5 years now.

[urbanmommy]

I wanted to like it but found that it made stains worse for my laundry. I haven't found anything "natural" that works for our clothes. Just using Tide these days.

[mikala]

We've used it for about a month and it seems fine so far but I usually use Fels-Naptha to spot-treat stains so I don't know how Charlie's would do on its own.

[kaharris83]

I am having a LOT of trouble with stains. Like, basically nothing comes out in the wash. so, either I am a laundry idiot (quite possible) or Charlie's Soap Powder lacks stain removal power. Mostly the stains we have are from food - not really dirt or grass, ink, blood or anything challenging like that. Just regular old food and/or food-related grease stains that show up after you pull it out of the dryer and you had no idea anything was even on it to begin with! How do you get this stuff out?

What is your experience with Charlie's? TIA!

We use Rockin Green but I was having the exact same issue you describe. I realized I wasn't using enough detergent. Maybe you need to use a little more. Its frustrating when you pull things out of the dryer and stains magically appear. Ours were mostly milk stains that hadn't been visible until we washed & dried.

[Puddy73]

It didn't work for us. I really wanted to like it, but after a few months all of our clothes were dingy and many of them had stains. I could usually scrub the stains out with Zout or Fels Naptha but I just didn't want to devote that much time to laundry.

[nrp]

It didn't work for us. I really wanted to like it, but after a few months all of our clothes were dingy and many of them had stains. I could usually scrub the stains out with Zout or Fels Naptha but I just didn't want to devote that much time to laundry.

:yeahthat: It was back to Tide for us!

[barkley1]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions!

[babyonway]

It didn't work for us. I really wanted to like it, but after a few months all of our clothes were dingy and many of them had stains.

:yeahthat:

[AustenFan]

:yeahthat:
:yeahthat:

[Joolsplus2]

I've been using exclusively Charlie's for about 6 years now. In an HE front loader. Sometimes I need to use two tablespoons and put it on the long wash to really get the funk out, and the all purpose cleaner sprayed on the spots gets them out very well (not perfect, I don't know how my 12 yo gets so much food on the front of her shirts, sigh). Sometimes in a load I want to be brightened up (aforementioned 12 yo's shirts, lol), I use a little clorox 2.

[ahrimie]

Doesn't really work for us either :( It makes my CDs dingy looking and for the regular clothes, DH doesn't like that there's no scent. I LIKE the no scent part but sometimes our clothes come out smelling like they still need to be washed! That I do not like :(

[Radosti]

I use Charlie's Soap as our detergent. I pre-treat stuff with Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap upon the reccomendation of a Hanna Andersson CS rep. If it's just super cruddy clothing, I also throw in a Tide Stain Release packet, the free and clear one. It works and I never have to deal with separating out the kids' clothing and such.

I also have a double capacity washer (the Whirlpool Duet) and as such, I have to use twice the Charlie's Soap. It took me a bit of time to figure it out, but now that we use two scoops, it works great.

[blue]

It didn't work for us. I really wanted to like it, but after a few months all of our clothes were dingy and many of them had stains.
:yeahthat: I am still using it even though our clothes don't look very good (I am lazy with laundry and do not pretreat stains). But, I will be switching back to tide free and clear once this tub is empty.

Some positives about charlies soap, the powder soap doesn't make me sneeze or give me itchy eyes like most powder soaps, and I didn't need to use dryer sheets with it like I do with my other detergent.

[Mermanaid]

We used it for about six months before finally giving up on it. I was just tired of trying to scrub out food stains it did not remove (I am not one to inspect each clothing item in the hampers every day to pre treat).

I always used two scoops on the 50 min cycle (normal wash on the HE. Next cycle is 60 mins and 90 mins.)

I've switched to Tide Pods and really like them for the few weeks we've been trying them.