Fels Naptha Laundry Bar Review with Purex Insiders

Thanks to Purex Insiders I received a full size Fels Naptha laundry bar for the purposes of this review.

As a mom of two young girls I’m always finding some form of stain on their clothing. Whether it’s food, drink, grease, paint or dirt they will find it and get it on their clothes – even the nice ones. When I received the Fels Naptha bar it was perfect timing. My youngest had gotten a new dress and she refused to take it off no matter what. Well, “what” finally happened when she got some form of grease and hot chocolate on the bodice. It sat in the hamper for a few days before I was able to make the time to pre-treat.

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The delay in pretreating was partially planned. I wanted to see how well Fels Naptha would do with a stain that had had a few days to dry onto the clothes. I know this was a huge gamble especially with a new dress. Also, I was afraid of treating too far in advance just in case the Fels Naptha would somehow damage the fabric if I left it on too long. I didn’t know; I’d never used it before. I’m used to using things like peroxide, bleach alternatives, and oxygen activated powders or the stick types pre-treaters that come in a tube like deodorant. One thing these all have in common is they aren’t cheap by any means. In this aspect Fels-Naptha surely has them beat. At only about $1.50 per bar no one can match the value.

Here’s what happened with Bonbons dress –

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I thoroughly wet the stained area using the tips of my fingers because I didn’t want to soak the whole garment.  Then I took the Fels Naptha bar and gently rubbed it on the stains until it started for form a tight foam.  I allowed the garment to sit undisturbed with the pretreater for about 30 minutes and then threw it in the laundry with like colors and washed it per the label directions – cold wash and low temperature dry.  Just a note the fabric of this dress is synthetic; the pretreater may work differently on natural fabrics like cotton or wool.  The little dress came out stain free! Yay!

I did use it on a white cotton shirt that I accidentally got stained with tomato sauce.  It took two treatments and washes with the Fels Naptha to make a significant reduction of the stain.  On the second treatment I rubbed the stained areas longer to build more of a froth and allowed them to sit for about 30 minutes before washing again in hot water.  There were a few dress shirts of my husband’s and one of my dad’s that still had a sour smell in the pits so I decided to treat them with the Fels Naptha bar, scrub thoroughly, allowed to sit 30 minutes and washed again.  The pretreater worked fantastically to remove the sour, sweaty smell from the shirts.  This is the first detergent I’ve used with any success at completely removing that smell from clothes.

A pretreater is just one of Purex Fels Naptha‘s many uses.  You can also use it as a laundry enhancer.  The directions say to grate 1/16th of the bar to add to your washer at the beginning of the wash. I’d recommend you have a grater especially for laundry use – maybe an old cheese grater you don’t use in the kitchen anymore.  You can also use this in recipes for home made detergent.  If you look on Pinterest or even search on Google for ‘recipes for home made laundry detergent’ you’ll find numerous recipes that contain Fels Naptha.  I have yet to try these but I have several saved for dry and liquid varieties.  From what I’ve been able to calculate though it takes a little effort it’s a great way to save money on laundry.

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