The Steamery Delicate Wool/Silk detergent: A Mostly Unscientific and Anecdotal Review
Some background: We wear a lot of merino wool. A lot. Every day, year round. Shirts, undershirts, tank tops, sweatpants, running/cycling shorts, skirts, culottes, vests, jackets, socks. We both work from home, and wool clothing is our standard "office pajamas." Think technical merino wool, like Smartwool, Icebreaker, etc., not more delicate things like cashmere sweaters, although we do, but that's not the focus of this post. Stinky pits are kind of a thing on some of our shirts.
I have been following this subreddit for a little less than two weeks, and so many light bulbs came on as I was reading the stickied posts (I am forever grateful to u/KismaiAesthetics). I have seen the error of my previous laundry ways, and I am now a convert to Tide Free & Gentle Odor Refresh liquid, FEBU, citric acid, and I've ditched the fabric softener. (N.B. I am eagerly awaiting the new GearGuard advanced formula that includes lipase along with DNAse, and will add that to our laundry cocktails in future.) Never mind that my husband is the one who actually does all the laundry each week; I am proselytizing to him, and he's on board with all of it.
BUT... what about all that merino wool that makes up >50% of our weekly (clothing) laundry? No FEBU for that, thank you, due to the protease. Lipase List to the rescue, and my order of The Steamery's Delicate Wool/Silk detergent just arrived.
Like the newly converted laundry zealot that I am, I grabbed the dirty wool clothes out of the laundry basket, a selection of previously washed "clean" wool clothes from the closet and drawers, even changed out of my own clothes and added them to the pile for immediate washing.
Washer: LG front loader, model 4370 something something, from 2017.
Dose: 1 Tbsp (15 ml) (our water is pretty soft, plus most of the clothes in this first load weren't really dirty)
Cycle: Cotton/Normal, Turbo Wash, Heavy Soil, High Spin, all the extra rinses (3). This worked out to ≈1h35m or so the display told me.
Temp: Hot. This is fine, because "Hot" on this washer turns out to be only around 35ºC in the wash cycle, max high temp of 39ºC. (I've been keeping a spreadsheet of avg wash temps for each cycle, and an average of 35ºC for "Hot" appears to be consistent across the cycles I've tested so far.)
All in all, I washed 30 shirts, 8 pairs of socks, 5 pairs of pants/sweatpants/shorts, all merino wool.
Results:
You guys. I'm impressed, so far. I noticed that, as I was hanging up each item to dry, the fibers just seemed much more relaxed. Previous wool wash loads with our old detergent always saw shirt hems and sleeve hems curling up and folding over on themselves, which I always had to take time to smooth out and unfold, so they would dry looking nicer. There was NONE of that behavior on any of the shirts in this load.
Everything also felt nice and soft, almost springy, squishy in a good way.
The smell is fine, although I wouldn't say it smells particularly like either "rose" or "musk", but it's ok. Very light. I'm sensitive to strong, and especially synthetic, fragrances, and this is... fine. It's not awful. I can live with it. Especially since I'm so impressed so far with the results in this first wash load.
I will post a follow-up after more loads, so I can form opinions based on more than just one data point.