tide laundry detergent

[creative animal lover]

If I got rats I would have to wash their stuff in our family’s washing machine. In order to make sure ray fur doesn’t not get every where I was planning to soak the fleece bedding/ hammocks and fleece stuff in a bucket of pretty warm water and a bit of food grade white vinegar, is this good? And will this help keep most rat stuff from getting stuck in the washing machine. Also as the title mentioned my family uses tide detergent, I think this is the only thing we use while washing clothes we don’t use fabric softener or dryer sheets, but I know Tide is dyed and I am pretty sure it has a smell. Is it ok if I wash rat stuff in this machine, but with something like seventh generation unscented detergent? I would assume the smell of Tide would still remain in the washer, but would this bug their respitory systems? Also would it help to add in a bit of vinegar?

 

[Luna&Ralph]

Using a different detergent in a washer that uses Tide will not leave the Tide scent on the fabrics. Adding vinegar to the wash is good for the scent and to help disinfect. I use unscented Tide on my rat laundry as well as vinegar or bleach and it ends up not smelling as nice as regular laundry would. When not being used for rat laundry, the machine uses Persil, which is also scented so from my experience you should be fine.

 

[Olympia✨]

Hm, I’ve always just used any unscented detergent but if there were any pesky stains that weren’t budging I always just added a cap of vinegar and it always did the trick.

 

[SqueakingJellybean]

We use unscented Tide and skip the dryer sheets, and our fuzzies are just fine with it.

 

[Ratmama17]

I was just wondering the same. I've been washing my rat laundry without detergent on a very high temp. I've noticed the rat smell is still there and I need to double wash. So is the verdict that any unscented detergent will do just fine?

 

[SqueakingJellybean]

@Ratmama17 -- Yep, unscented detergent, no dryer sheet (or an unscented one), and your fuzzies should be just fine.