Death and taxes get all the credit. What about laundry?
WIN Detergent ( $11, windetergent.com)
If you wear clothes–and I hope you do–then laundry is a part of your life. Laundromats, laundry rooms, washtubs and clotheslines in the backyard; somehow, you’ve got to do the wash.
Wait a minute… A laundry review in an outdoor/travel magazine? Bear with me, it’s relevant.
WIN bills itself as “High Performance Sports Detergent.” It’s specially made to clean technical fabrics. By technical, I mean extra smelly. But seriously you know what technical fabrics are. They’re the synthetic materials from which your workout clothes and probably most of your outdoor apparel are made. Likely you’re aware that synthetics tend to stink more after wearing and over time than clothes made from natural fibers like cotton or wool. (Lady Gaga’s meat dress from a few years ago is a likely exception to the natural fiber rule.)
My experience with WIN has largely been a great one. I’ve tried both formulations: WIN Blue, with its fresh scent; and WIN Green, a fragrance free version made with more sustainable ingredients. Both kinds of WIN work in conventional and high-efficiency washing machines and can be used for washing clothes by hand.
WIN has pretty well performed as advertised. It rinses clean and leaves clothes feeling new. In my experience, the Blue formula is a little better at removing odors from workout clothes. But WIN Green is also effective. I recently used it to wash several pairs of shoes. Impressively, it removed months worth of summer vacation sweat smell from my wife’s Keen sandals. If you’ve ever owned Keen sandals, you know that this is sort of miraculous.
Another benefit of WIN Detergent is that the bottle is fairly small, making it great for car travel. But even such a small bottle will do a lot of laundry. The 32 oz. bottle will do 32 normal size loads. Use 2 ounces for big loads. Overall I’m happy with WIN and will continue using it for washing synthetics. It works for natural fibers too, in my opinion.
WIN is made in the USA. Find out more by visiting windetergent.com
