I suggest keep using liquids for your clothing, since that has been working, and once a week wash sheets or other non clothing items in HOT water, and maybe even throw in some oxygen bleach. That should take care of crud prevention in the machine, along with leaving the door open except while in use.

If your not wanting to use hot water then liquid would be what you want to use. Body oils do not get washed out completely unless hot water is used. You mentioned you didn’t want to pre-treat but I’m afraid if you don’t and don’t use hot water there will still be some oils left over.

I exclusively wash everything in hot and have no issues with fading or shrinking. I do use cheer powder for darks (or German persil color powder for darks and German universal powder for whites) as it helps keep the color along with no addition of optical brighteners which can make dark clothing look faded.

Body oils are a tough one as it needs hot water. I would try liquid detergent first though. Tide pur clean liquid detergent don’t have optical brighteners in that formula so may work for you.

Good luck.

Thank you so much for the comments. I was afraid that liquids might be the answer. It's not a big deal except there are so few available without OBs. I will check out Tide Pur Clean. Also, I noticed that Cheer liquid gets good reviews for darks in spite of it's OBs, so maybe there are not enough in it to cause the appearance of fading.

I did try some further experimentation with Cheer powder to see if I could remove that sour bar soap smell (which, fwiw, is not from body oils, but rather from an oil based deodorant). A second warm wash with Cheer and 1.5 c ammonia did not improve it much, but wash #3 with extra Cheer in hot water did remove most of the smell.

So, you all are right about the hot water. These were mostly older, casual clothes, but I just can't imagine washing my special dark clothes in hot! I am going to have to do some more research...

True, I didn't think of that.

There are pods to try. But hot water in a front loader with an internal heater will work well and it may not matter then which detergent you use.

My top loader washer stinks on the inside. Actually, my last two top loading washers have. I have been washing clothes for forty years and have never had stinky washers before. My laundry room has a gas water heater and i always keep the lid open, so the room is always dry. Then I realized I have been using liquid detergents for the last 13 years. I switched back to powder and after a few weeks, the stench is gone. No more liquid detergent for me. I read somewhere that powders have more water softeners. My current washer is a Speed Queen.