As I have a baby I am really concern on the type of detergent I use as I do not want my baby to have skin irritation. So I normally buy baby detergent which produce less bubbles to wash my baby clothes. However I do not like to use macine wash as I am afraid the detergent is not fully dissolved. However for this ball the detergent is in a form of pellets, when it is mixed with water, the detergent will dissolve out and you still can see bubbles.
So how effective is that ball which is so small and can wash for 1000 times? I can't check whether it can last for 1000 times or not cos it may took me 2 years before I can give you an answer. During the demo the person added dark soy sauce and iodine on a white cloth and it can be cleaned with the laundry ball in a washing machine. So I did an experiment using tap water, laundry ball, baby detergent and those concentrated washing powder with soy sauce, chilli and chocolate stain (I do not have iodine at home so I did not try on that).
To my surprise, tap water is good enough to wash soy sauce stain (so I don't really need the ball as demo by the person to wash those stain). Of course the rest are able to wash soy sauce stain too. I do scrub abit so hopefully my scrubbing is consistent for all the test.
After that I tried with chilli and soy sauce stain (again) and scrub the same no of time for all the test. Soy sauce stain can still be removed but for the chilli stain the best result is the normal concentrated detergent. Laundry ball and the baby detergent have almost the same result then the least effective is the tap water (result not shown cos it not very visible in photo).
Then I use chocolate stain and count the no of time I need to scrub to fully remove the stain. The best is still normal detergent which only need 70 scrubs followed by baby detergent which need around 90 scrub then laundry ball which is around 170 scrub the worst is tap water, after 200 scrub the stain is still not fully removed. Then I compare the colour of the detergent water at the end of experiment, the normal detergent water is the most dirtiest followed by the laundry ball, baby detergent then the tap water.
So in conclusion normal detergent is still the best but is gives the most bubbles and more soapy which mean that you need to rinse the clothes more times. But in term of economical wise laundry ball is the most economical if it really can last for 1000 wash and it has the least bubbles so you can save more water too as you do not need to rinse more. Then baby detergent is the least economical even though it has less bubbles compare to normal detergent but it is the most expensive one. So next time do consider trying the laundry ball as it leaves no powder residue (especially using machine wash, as sometime the detergent is folded in the clothes and not dissolved in the water). It is also convenient too, all you need is to throw the ball in the washing machine with your dirty clothes that all. No need to worry how much detergent to add. This is because with more load, the washing machine will add more water so more water will dissolve the pebbles and you will get more detergent for your wash.
However do note one experimental error in this experiment. I can put the same amount of washing powder for the baby detergent and normal detergent but I cannot control the amount of detergent that is dissolved into the water from the laundry ball. What I did is to soak the ball in around 2L of water for 10 min and took the water for this experiment. So who knows if I soak the ball longer, more detergent is dissolved out and it may even clean the stain better than those powder detergent?
After all, I have been using the ball for 2 weeks I am satisfied with the result. My clothes are cleaned and leave no smell too (not smelly but don't expect what lemon smell or detergent smell cos it don't contain those chemical that produce the smell). I tried to use machine wash but then I was too picky and have a habit to scrub my clothes. So I decided to soak all my clothes in a pail with that ball for around 30 min, scrub the clothes in another basin of clean water then throw all into the washing machine and start only the rinse and spin function. So I actually save more water cos I only use around 2 pail for washing compare to the wash function of the washing machine somemore it only stir my clothes so not sure whether it can wash the milk stain on my clothes or not.
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