fabric softener

Intelligent as my mother is, she occasionally seems to be quite easily addled by what I consider to be simple tasks, like booking an airline flight online or differentiating between similar products in the grocery store. I've noticed this trait, to varying degrees, in many people who are older than I am, and I always privately snicker at it a bit.

So maybe the following anecdote is divine retribution for that snickering.

I was on the phone with DWE earlier today, and I was telling him that I was going to be giving him some stuff, like miscellaneous food products, dish soap, detergent, etc. As I was saying this I was standing at my counter, where my laundry detergent has been sitting for at least a week. It is Method brand detergent, which you may be familiar with if you shop at Target. I like that brand because it is ultra-concentrated, so the bottle is comparatively small and light. I actually bought the bottle I have now while I was with DWE; I remember because I consulted him on the scent ("It smells like yuppies"). Anyway, I was on the phone, and I was looking at the label of the bottle, and I noticed something that I had never noticed before. Right underneath where it says "Method" on the bottle, it says "Fabric Softener." Nowhere on the bottle does it say "Detergent" or "Laundry Soap." Do you know why? Because it's not soap! It's fabric softener! Yes, I have been washing my clothes for at least two months now using nothing but fabric softener (well, and water).

I admit that I freaked out a little bit. ("All my clothes are dirty! I've been wearing dirty clothes for months! Oh my God! All my underwear is dirty! I'm wearing dirty underwear!") DWE was helpful and showed admirable restraint in making fun of me (which is not to say that he didn't make fun of me, just to say that he could have made much more fun of me). He reassured me that my clothes don't smell bad and that a piece of fabric can get reasonably clean just by being agitated and rinsed for half an hour in a washing machine. He also reminded me that there are lots of people in the world that probably don't wash their clothes with soap (or at least not nearly as often as Americans do).

Anyway, I can't believe I bought fabric softener instead of soap. Except I sort of can believe it, because the bottles are the exact same shape and were no doubt right next to each other on the shelf, and the words "fabric softener" are not huge, as you can see below:

On the other hand, the words aren't exactly tiny, either. I think part of the problem is that I wanted to get a different scent than I had gotten the last time, and in retrospect I'm not sure if they actually had a different scent in the detergent. I just saw a bottle next to what I'd gotten the last time that was the same size and shape but a different, more appealing-sounding scent. And then once I bought the bottle I didn't ever read it.

So now I'm fascinated by the fact that had I not happened to be looking at the bottle carefully today, I could have never known that I spent months washing my clothes without soap. My clothes smell fine (very good, in fact), and don't seem unclean in any way. Why should I even use soap? How do I know that "soap" is getting my clothes clean when I can't even tell when I stop using it?

That said, I will be purchasing laundry soap tomorrow so that I can wash my sheets and towels before I pack them.