Talk Me Into Or Out Of A Front Loader

[MrX]

I was asking my grandmother about how she washed clothes over the years in her household.

Seems they got a washing machine quite early on. Her mother had one, so from the 1920s onwards.

Various technologies:
Some kind of a manually operated agitator washer with a mangle on top.
Then early Hoover single tubs with a mangle
Then Hoovermatic TwinTub
Then Hotpoint automatic agitator
Front loader automatic in 1971
and it's been that since.

She said she can't remember boiling anything ever at any stage. In fact, reckoned it would wreck the clothes if you did that and reckoned that most whites were washed at no more than about 60C other than if someone was sick or something and she needed to sterlise sheets.

If whites were dingy, they were soaked in some kind of stuff over night. In a large bucket. I assume it was oxygen bleach based.

Sequence of detergents:
Rinso & Lux
Omo
Persil and Ariel Automatic

 

[tumbler]

Bleach in a f.l.

I've never experienced troubles in a f.l. which I could trace to use of chlorine bleach. However, nowadays I only usually use it to wash the towels I use in the kitchen or for general house cleaning, to disinfect them. I buy an oxygen bleach at Whole Foods Market made by either 7th Generation or Ecover, which is nothing but a stronger concentration of hydrogen peroxide than you get at the drugstore, I put some in with the detgergent and some in the bleach dispenser when doing my white linens and such, and they come out great. I use the "whiter whites" selection on my Duet HT and "deselect" the extra rinse, since I don't need it if I'm not using Clorox.

 

[MrX]

I find it amazing that the likes of P&G doesn't just launch a version a tide based on European Ariel or why Unilever doesn't just roll out Omo/Persil under the All brand or even All Omo or something.

Also, Henkel owns US soap maker Dial Corp. Persil could be launched via the Purex brand.

http://www.dialcorp.com/index.cfm?page_id=33 ?

 

[MrX]

The link

Link to Dial Corp.

http://www.dialcorp.com/index.cfm?page_id=33

 

[btjustice]

I wish Unilever would do that to. It still cracks me up that if you go to http://www.wisk.com/ that instead of seeing the different Wisk detergents that it shows you how to put your kid's picture on the cover of a Life magazine. I think I might give Wisk a shot the next time I need detergent for my FL.

 

[peterh770]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that US Wisk is the same formula as UK Persil. I'm extremely pleased with the performance of Wisk 3x HE and the green bottle ALL S&M in my FL.

The way that Dial/Henkel has positioned the Purex brand, they would never make it high end like Persil. Better to be #1 in the budget brand market than go up against the high end 1000 pound gorilla. More likely that they would come up with another brand name or revive a dead brand to introduce a high end Persil-like formula to compete with Tide. But then, their importing/marketing agreement with Miele might prevent that anyway.

 

[MrX]

I wonder if Henkel have rights to Persil as a TM in the US and Canada.
It's quite possible that Unilever have it there too.

Unilever definitely have it France, Ireland, New Zealand and The UK.

 

[btjustice]

Here is an interesting article about P&G & Unilever...

http://faculty.msb.edu/homak/HomaHelpSite/WebHelp/P&G_vs_Unilever_-_Game_of_Inches_Fortune_2-5-01.htm

 

[washertalk]

Congrads to those who recently got new Front Loaders.