"Since soil fungi aid in digesting the organic matter in your soil why would you want to kill it?" Because not all fungi are beneficial. I don't know about using baby shampoo for this, but some people have reported that using corn meal at 10-20 lbs per 1000 sq ft will eliminate some lawn fungi (it works by promoting the good fungi, which eliminate the bad).

The notion that baby shampoo puts an additive in it, that numbs the eyes is taken from one of those "send this to everybody" emails that circulate. This urban myth is addressed on the Johnson & Johnson website under the FAQ section. It says: "The assertion that chemicals are added that numb the baby's eyes is totally false. The reason JOHNSON´S® shampoo formulas do not irritate the eyes is the mildness of the formulation, which has undergone extensive clinical testing and has proven to be as gentle to the eyes as pure water." Amphoteric surfactants are how the shampoos keep tears away. It is Sodium Laureth Sulfate and Potasium Laureth Sulfate that are the irritants and they are not put in baby shampoo or in the expensive adult 'salon shampoo'. Sodium Laureth Sulfate and Potasium Laureth Sulfate are always in the El Cheapo shampoos. Here is an explanation I copied: The active part of shampoo comes from a family of chemicals known as "surfactants". Sodium Laureth Sulfate and Potasium Laureth Sulfate are two of the most common. These handy little molecules have one end which is hydrophilic and another which is hydrophobic. The result is that one end grabs oil from the hair and then hitches on to the water for a short ride into the drain. The problem with suractants is that, when they get into the eyes, the keep doing their job. The tear film on the eye is mostly water with a bit of oil and it acts as a protective barrier. Surfactants pretty much remove this protection. It gets worse though, they do a fine job of stimulating nerves in the eye. This hurts. No Tears shampoos also contain surfactants, but they piggyback a larger molecule on the surfactant to keep it from getting into the sensitive tissues in the eye. The substance is called and Amphoteric Surfactant. The molecule still holds the same oil/water binding properties, but it is too big to get through tissue etc. The result is... well... no more tears. Here is a link that might be useful: J&J FAQ

So you're the sad lawn poster child :-( The good news is that you're doing everything I was doing when I first came to this forum in 2002, everything, so there's hope for you. You're on your way with shampoo. Your moisture penetration will improve greatly. You'll feel it underfoot after it rains. You should never have to reseed with KBG. It spreads by itself to fill thin areas. Could it be your trees have grown up to provide too much shade for KBG? It needs a good bit of sunlight every day. Chances are you don't have clay, but we don't get many people from Denver on this forum. Maybe there is clay there. There are two ways to check that. One is the bottle test. Get a bottle with straight sides and fill it half full of soil. Take a picture with a ruler next to the jar. Then fill the jar with water and a drop or two of shampoo or dish soap. Shake the jar until the soil is completely incorporated in the slurry. Set it down and wait 2 minutes. Take a picture with the ruler at 2 minutes, 2 hours, and 2 days. Sand and gravel will settle instantly. At 2 minutes you'll have an idea of sand, gravel, and silt. Loam will settle in 2 hours. The really fine particles will settle in 2 days. If you can see through the water after 2 days then you likely have no clay at all. Clay tends to remain suspended in the water for many days. The other way to check for clay is to have your soil tested at an excellent lab like Logan Labs. You've probably read some of those soil test posts here. Clay soils will have an exchange capacity up above 15. Having gone through all that, if you have an imbalance of salts (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) then the soil can act just like clay in almost every respect. But this can be fixed by rebalancing the salts. The good soil tests will give you that information and morpheuspa (a member of this forum) can help you get the right stuff added. I don't know what will happen to your water bill, but you are not watering right. Get some cat food or tuna cans and place them around the yard. Turn on your sprinklers and time how long it takes to fill the cans. That will become your watering time from now on. What changes is how frequently you water. The basic rules are that you deep water once per month when temps are below 70 degrees F. Water once every 3 weeks with temps in the 70s. Water once every 2 weeks with temps in the 80s. Water once a week with temps in the 90s. The reason this works is you are deep watering every time. When water is deeper in the soil where the temps are cooler, the water evaporates more slowly giving the roots longer to absorb moisture. This also forces the roots to grow down deeper giving you better drought resistance. Going hand in hand with watering properly is mowing properly. You should be mowing KBG or fescue at the mower's highest setting. Tall grass grows deeper roots and provides more shade on the soil helping to keep it cool. Organic fertilizers are made from animal feeds, so I like to go direct to the feed store and get it at "wholesale." Seriously you save about 5/6 the cost of organic ferts by buying 50-pound bags of soybean meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow), corn meal, or corn gluten meal. Call your feed stores and see what they have and get prices. The application rate is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Milorganite is fine if that's all you can find. That concoction of stuff you read about is, surprisingly, not all that bad. The guy who made that popular is Jerry Baker, "America's Master Gardener." Back when he was on TV everyone on these forums just laughed about his recipes. Now, however, with some more thought, there's really nothing wrong with those. You'll get better results from 15 pounds of alfalfa pellets, though. The same goes for compost. You'll get much better bang for your buck with organic fertilizer. If you want to fertilize, use fertilizer. If you want to kill weeds, spot spray with something like Weed b Gon or Weed b Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer. Those won't kill grassy weeds. For those you'll need to identify them and get more specific help. Post pictures here and ask for help. Speaking of pictures, if you could post one that shows your shade situation that would help. You might be able to loosen the extra soil and get it out. Try loosening it with a rake and water washing to move it around or get it more level. Leveling is a different topic. You might search this forum for more info on leveling. That will give you more questions to ask. So essentially lawn care boils down to watering properly, mowing properly, and fertilizing. Those are in order of importance, by the way. If you're not watering properly, then the fertilizer choice is immaterial. Here are some motivational pictures. The first one shows the fertilizer effect of alfalfa pellets.Thanks to mrmumbles for this picture. The alfalfa pellets were applied in mid May. The picture was taken in mid July. You can clearly see the improved color, density, and growth. This next picture is morpheuspa's lawn. These lawns are all KBG in eastern PA. The big difference is that morph's is watered deeply once a week in the summer and he's mostly organic with fertilizer. This was taken in July several years ago. His neighbors water every day.

I couldn't link it. Instead, I'll type it. Here goes: water, PEG-80, sorbitan laurate, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium laureth sulfate, PEG150 distearate, tetrasodium, EDTA, sodium chloride, polyquaternium-10, fragrance, PEG-175, diisostearate, phenoxyethanol, caprylyl glycol, sodium hydroxide