It’s been a while since I’ve written about laundry detergent, and I’m sure you’ve missed it. As you may recall, I had been purchasing one-ton boxes from Sears for a dollar, breaking down my laundry detergent cost to about $.30 a week. (A lot of that was exaggeration, but not that last bit. Three loads, ten cents a load.)
The past year or so, I’ve been buying some Arm and Hammer stuff from Wal*Mart. It’s also cheap, but it works well and even smells nice. I’m almost at the end of a box, so it was time to get another. With all the moving-stuff-out-of-the-apartment work, I stopped at the dollar store to get some light bulbs and saw this stuff. Five bucks for 70 ounces? It looked like more soap and the price was right. I got it.
The instructions are in Spanish, with some badly-translated English subtitles. See that circle at the top? I have no idea how much 250 ml is. No idea.
See the instructions under box #2? It says ‘1 cup’? I thought that meant a 250 ml scoop that must be in the bag. Again, I have no idea how much 250 ml is.
Let’s stop for a moment to read some adorable translations.
“Dry white clothes in the sun and color clothes in the shadow.”
“Soak for 20 minutes a part of your clothes that you can’t see while wearing.”
Awww…..
Back to the math. Once home, I googled the milliliter thing and 250 of them is A CUP OF SOAP. EIGHT OUNCES OF SOAPY POWDER. FOR ONE LOAD. You have got to be kidding me. We all know that the world is using way too much soap, right? That is insane!!!
I bought a box of my regular stuff (which has comforting Spanish labeling on one side) at Wal-Mart. The price breakdown per ounce is: Arm & Hammer = 7.1 cents / Ariel = 7.3.
The cost per load? Arm & Hammer = 7.1 cents (I bet I use about an ounce) / Ariel (suggested use) = 58.4 cents
I bucked the system, though, and ran a load of whites through with just an ounce. The clothes have come out pretty dang nice looking. I’ll keep the bag.
Oh, and it’s chock full of bluing. There are instructions on the bag for what to do if your clothes come out blue.
Deborah says
Now I have to figure out how much I spend per load. Thanks, Lauren.