One of the purchases that really irk me about my wife, is her insistence on buying fragrance boosters for laundry. I’m not angry about, nor denying, the results—her clothes smell good enough to eat, and way better than mine when they come out of the laundry—but it’s the cost that gets me: around $6 for a bottle that gets her maybe 10 uses, if not less, which is absurd. I could understand more if it provided some other laundry-related function—removing stains or softening the fabric, perhaps?–but no, literally all it’s there for is to make your laundry smell stronger. Why do you need your clothes to smell like you sprayed a gallon jug of Febreze on them? For me, it’s good enough just to know my clothes are clean and don’t smell like sweat, but to each their own, I guess.
Then I saw a bottle of fragrance booster at Dollar Tree, and figured “Why not?”. After all, this took care of my biggest complaint: the monetary component. If this could keep my clothes smelling even a little bit stronger than they do with standard detergent, and for only $1, then what’s not to like? I was also secretly hoping it would perform well enough to get my wife to kick her “name brand” habit.
Dollar Tree actually has two different kinds of fragrance booster: one that looks like small blue crystals, and another one that looks like spherical pellets. Even though the pellet-spheres looked more like the national brand, and also looked much more inviting, they smelled like garbage, and so I went with the crystals, which had a much fresher scent. I was a little put-off by the lack of a brand name, which generally screams “Please don’t buy me because I don’t work!“, but I wasn’t going to let that deter me from at least giving them a chance.
The directions state to just dump some of this stuff in the bottom of an empty washer, before adding your clothes. Generally, I forego this and tend to just dump some on the top of my fully-loaded washer, because I forget to put them in in advance; honestly, I haven’t noticed a difference either way. At any rate, after pouring some of the blue crystals in, you just wash and dry your clothes as you normally would, and voila! Fresh-smelling laundry!
How much should you add, though? The same directions merely state a max of 2/3 cup, which really gives you quite a bit of wiggle room in between “nothing” and “2/3 cup”. Of course, being the frugal-ass cheapskate that I am, I put in just a little bit the first time I used it, and while the clothes smelled pretty good coming out of the washer, the dryer seemed to remove all of the fresh scent. Upon trying it again, I made sure to add a little more—to the point that I felt like I was wasting it—and it worked a lot better. I’ve still never measured the exact amount (and I’m not going to buy a 2/3 measuring cup just to keep in the laundry room for the rare moments I do this), but I tend to pour it into the drum at a decent clip while circling around three times…it’s certainly unscientific, but it’s the amount that I’ve found to work pretty well. The scent doesn’t last as long as my wife’s, who uses the name brand stuff (or Aldi’s Tandil version, when available), and it isn’t as strong, but it’s certainly noticeable, and a step up from nothing.
All in all, I’d say I get around the same amount of “servings” out of a bottle of this as my wife does with hers (around ten, maybe a couple less), but obviously for a much better price. And I’ve noticed that my wonderful counterpart—who scoffed at me for buying them—has changed her tune about this fragrance booster, even going so far as to use it herself when she ran out of her preferred brand. Unfortunately, she still likes the performance of the name brand much better, and continues to waste her money on that stuff (isn’t psychology great?) but just the fact that she didn’t completely hate it counts as a “win” for me. I don’t use them for every wash cycle, the way she does with her stupid stuff (which, to me, is little more than a scam, considering they perform no other function whatsoever), but for especially stinky or sweaty loads, they do make the clothes come out smelling a lot fresher and cleaner, at least for a little while.
Overall: 8.5/10. If you vomit at the mere thought of spending $5 (or more) on little tablets of dumb shit that serve no other purpose but to make clothes smell better, but still want to make your clothes smell better, then these little bottles are the ones for you! This fragrance booster doesn’t cling to clothes after completed wash cycles as well as the brand name stuff (which can be expected), but it works way better than I ever thought possible for the price, even earning my wife’s seal of approval in the process (though she’ll only actually use them when she’s completely out of her stuff). I get somewhere around ten servings per bottle, and that’s enough to get most loads smelling fresh out of the dryer, at least for a little while. At the very least, it’s great to have on hand for extra gross loads (dog piss, sweat, murder clean-up, etc.), and is highly recommended.
