When you’re in the postpartum fog, baby laundry can dominate your days.
I know this from experience. After the births of each of my three children, the laundry piled higher and higher. As my family grew, so did the loads; eventually I found myself doing laundry four times a day, sorting baby clothes separately from everyone else’s and pouring baby detergent with a scientist’s precision.
So imagine my relief when I learned from my colleague Andrea Barnes’s reporting that you don’t need baby-specific detergent: As Andrea writes in our laundry detergent guide, dedicated baby detergents are “expensive and unnecessary.” You also can skip out on washing your baby’s clothes separately.
There are still some things to keep in mind before you toss your whole family’s laundry in together. I looked into what the experts recommend, and I found that you can simply wash your family’s clothes with a dye-free detergent that’s also fragrance-free (not unscented — they’re not synonymous).
Andrea has tested more than 35 detergents, and of all of them, she recommends our top pick, Tide Free & Gentle Liquid Laundry Detergent, for babies and parents. It wins out for its ability to tackle grease and oil-based messes, as well as odors (read: food and poop).
Originally published on Source.
