Coming Clean With the Truth About the Best Detergents -- Savings Experiment

One of the earliest signs of the arrival of soap in the civilized world dates to the Babylonians of 2800 B.C. Too bad for all those ancient homemakers, though, who would have to wait another 47 centuries (give or take a few spin cycles) before they could use the suds to easily do the family laundry.

When Procter & Gamble introduced Tide in 1943, consumer response was immediate; stores had to limit how much of the stuff folks could buy. In its first 21 years, P&G tweaked Tide's formula at least 22 times in search of detergent perfection.

In the 21st Century we're still searching for bubbly bliss: a cleanliness that, if not next to godliness, at least approaches the divine. In that spirit, we here at the Savings Experiment have rubbed and scrubbed our way through all the research we could find. When it comes to clean clothes (and clean dishes, for that matter), we'd rather not settle for second-best soap ... or watch our hard-earned cash wash down the drain, either.

If there are secrets we've gleaned for washing machine success, we're about to come clean with them in this latest installment of the Savings Experiment.