I’ve bought a big box of cheapo laundry detergent powder (ingredients list <5% Anionic surfacants) and it is performing much less well than the store branded stuff (>15% Anionic surfacants), I always used to buy. I don’t want to waste my money, but don’t want to continue with subpar results so if I were to buy my regular brand and mix them 50-50 would it be something like 75% as effective as using pure store brand stuff, or are the different formulas likely to counteract each other, making the addition of the cheap stuff either not effective at all or actively less effective?
Nah, you’re fine to mix them up.
For certain kinds of stains, I routinely run a load with a mix of mid-tier liquid laundry detergent (Purex, All, etc.) with Ajax liquid dish soap. Nothing special about Ajax … it’s just what we like best to have in the house for handwashing dishes. I’ve used many brands of dish soap in the laundry this way, mixed with liquid laundry soap.
Do you throw the laundry powder in on top of still-dry clothes? It’s fine to do that … but if you feel like your soap is a little wimpy, you could throw the powder into the still-filling tub before you put the clothes in to give the soap more time to diffuse into the water more completely. Note that I am assuming a top-loader like I have at home (have front-loaders totally taken over, or are top-loaders still out there in numbers?).
Sure, you can mix them up.
You might try using one notch higher on the temperature chart and/or using more of it.
I’d be careful about adding something like Ajax dishwashing soap- it can easily foam up and cause problems. A little probably isn’t an issue, but I’d be careful.
I’d wager that your plan will work just fine but I’d probably do an experiment with clothes you don’t like all that much first. The odds of something untoward happening are low but why risk it for stuff that’s important?
I had a similar experience with some cheapo laundry soap that gave unsatisfactory results. Turned out it still worked well for some clothes. My cotton/poly blend tee shirts came out fine but heavier cloth like my jeans and towels seemed more stubborn. It may be worth an experiment or two.
Up to at least a half cup, for sure, is not a problem at all. Those sitcom situations where a whole mess of foam comes out of the top of the machine … that’s never happened to me. Actually, it doesn’t really foam up much inside the washing machine at all (again, using a top loader).
Suds can be a real problem with front loaders, causing their rear tub bearings to fail. The admonition to use only “high-efficiency or HE” detergents does matter with them, since HE pretty much means suds-free.
There is a reason not to mix them. Detergents are often designed with ingredients that are somewhat antagonistic to each other, and they formulate them to minimize this antagonism. This is, by the way, much more of a problem for liquid detergents than for powders, as powders can keep ingredients sequestered from one another whereas liquids have them all in the same solution or suspension.
It is possible that mixing detergents will destroy some of the useful behaviors of ingredients in one detergent because the other detergent contains things very antagonistic for those ingredients.
But the consequence would be poor cleaning, not anything destructive to the clothing. If you try it and like the result, great - if you don’t like it, just rewash.