@ Cavimum I always thought 4 grains per gallon was considered relatively soft, but a quick googling says that 4 GPG would be considered moderately hard water, as you said (USGS defines hard water here). CS laundry booster and hard water treatment may help a little, but I wouldn't expect a major change given your hardness values. I have a whole house softener, so my water has 0 hardness. CS still gave me dingy whites and did not clean as well as my other products. It also did not make my clothes feel soft, as others have claimed, despite repeated washes. I eventually stopped using CS because the results were unsatisfactory. Granted, I'm a picky person. My suggestion would be to buy the CS laundry booster and see how it goes. If you are happy, great. If not, switch to another product and donate your CS detergent stash to a local animal shelter - the puppies will love you forever. Keep the laundry booster to use with any other product you buy down the road. If I were you I would not buy the EcoVantage - there is nothing "eco" about it except the name and it doesn't clean much better than CS. The full ingredients list is not disclosed anywhere, and there are no environmental claims on the label except for the name of the product. I think it's smoke and mirrors. I highly recommend Bi-O-Kleen Premium powder. It's scent-free, environmentally friendly, and most importantly, it cleans well. That's where I would start. You may also like Vaska scent-free. It claims to be as effective as Tide while being natural and using no enzymes. It's herbal-based cleaning at its best, and the lavender scented version is my go-to detergent. It also leaves your clothes much, much softer than any other product (without fabric softener).

Charlie's Soap is wonderful! As time goes on, and as we use various different products, I think it's easy to lose sight of what it feels like to have truly clean clothing against your skin. I hesitated to try Charlie's Soap initially because it lacked enzymes, but I don't know how that translates into real results. I must say that my clothing feels much better against my skin, I haven't had a single bout of itching, and I'm amazed at how long my kitchen towels last between washings. My towels would smell bad pretty quickly before, but after washing them in Charlie's I find that they are more absorbent and resist smelling "foul" for a longer period of time. For those who want enzymes, Shaklee makes a product called Nature Bright Laundry Booster and Stain Remover. It contains oxygen bleach and enzymes. I haven't used it, perhaps someone else has? Does anyone know if it works, and if it rinses as cleanly as the CS? At this point, I think I'm a CS convert. It took a couple of washes to completely eliminate the tomato stains on my partner's shirt (he had a pasta explosion in the kitchen haha), but I think that's a small price to pay for a totally natural product that makes my clothes and skin happy. Had I pre-treated the tomato stain, it probably would have disappeared in the first wash, but I'm lazy. Jerrod, I hope your CS experience is as good as mine. Let us know!

Interesting test! If the Shout has a bunch of fillers, brighteners and other crud found in standard detergents, it would make sense that it might coat the fibers of the clothes and help the stains to "hang on." I've found that while CS doesn't get out every stain, often after a few more washes the stain will just fade away. This is acceptable for kids' clothes, IMHO. The stains are usually really light after the first wash anyway. Would you consider doing the test using CS all-purpose cleaner? That's not supposed to have any extraneous chemicals in it. You could also wash the socks a few more times in CS to compare the progressive fading of the stain.

You do what is right for you. I'm a CS fan myself, but what works for me may not work for someone else. On top of that, when I switched to CS I still had other detergent here I was trying. I'm not about to let the other stuff I had prior to the CS go to waste no matter how much I like the CS. To do so would be wasteful. I just figured out a way to incorporate different things into different loads and use the CS exclusively on my lil ones clothing and the hubs uniforms right now. When I first got my HE washer, I got some Cheer HE to try it since the HE's were suppose to rinse better I figured the scent may not hurt. Everything seemed to be okay for a while. Then I got some Tide Free HE to help another poster as they were having a suds prob and wanted to see if it was the detergent. Found out it was as that stuff sudses a lot in certain machines. Then I got some ALL FC HE to see if that would do the same thing. It didn't suds as much and rinsed out much better, but it didn't get all the stains out either. Now to use them up, I use the Tide Free HE on my and my hubs clothing because I can use an unscented fabric softener to cut the suds. I put a cap of the Cheer into a spray bottle with water to use as a pretreater on our clothes as the Tide washes out the Cheers perfume. I use the All FC on all of our bedding as they do not get stained. Like I said earlier, I use the CS on my lil ones clothes and hubs uniforms. As I use up all of my old detergent, other things will get switched to the CS. CS was just the over all right thing for me as: I can't use scented things on mine and my kids clothing for very long, I can't use fabric softener on my kids clothing, Tide Free HE was leaving behind too many suds because of the way my washer works (very little water) and cutting it back too much didn't get my clothes clean, and the All FC wasn't getting all of the muck out of the kids clothes. As you can see, I have special needs for a detergent anyway. CS just fit the bill in my situation. On top of that, CS does work slower than many commercial detergents so pretreating and presoaking are definitely a requirement here for me, but I use to do that before anyway so it wasn't that much of a switch. I can see where many would not like the CS for that reason alone and do not begrudge them for it. Also, the CS does have to be orderd online as it is not carried in many stores in many areas. Depending on where you live, it may very well be more expensive than what a person could find at the store. For me the CS happens to work out cheaper per load even with the multi purpose pretreater. I'm a big advocate of finding what thing or things work for you. If you want to use more than the Charies go right ahead. You have to do what is right for you. There is nothing wrong with that. You may end up not liking the CS at all, so it would be good to have other things on hand. If that ends up being the case, use up the CS by cleaning out your machine with it occasionally or mopping your floors with a little or whatever you can think of. At least, in the long run, you will be happy with the results of whatever you do and that is what matters the most. : D