May 5: Method Laundry Detergent

How many of you use Method brand home and personal care products? My wife loves them! I guess they use only natural ingredients, so none of that bad stuff that if inhaled, absorbed or ingested will doom you 20 years down the road. I'm thankful for my wife wanting us to be around for a while, but to be honest the extra few bucks you have to drop on this stuff, as compared to other brands, isn't really doing much for me now. Regardless, every shopping trip to Target finds Method products in the basket. Actually, until just recently, I thought Method was a Target brand. But it's not, you can find the brand at Costco, Whole Foods, Lowe's, even Toys R Us; or so their website claims. Anyway, I tried out the Method Laundry Detergent for the first time today, as I threw in a load of dirty clothes before jumping on a business call. Four pumps is what the instructions call for, and apparently that's much less than the traditional line inside the "cup top" that I'm used to measuring from with Tide, All or any other normal laundry detergent. According to the product description on the Method website, this particular detergent has a "patent-pending smartclean technology, uses an ultra concentrated plant-based formula that delivers big cleaning power with just a few tiny squirts, and a 35% smaller carbon footprint than conventional detergent." Cool. My only problem with this "super detergent" is that my clothes look and smell the same after the wash cycle as they did with any of the past detergents we sank our cash into. So, my question is, WHY AMY I PAYING MORE FOR THE SAME RESULTS? And, don't think the "patent pending" situation doesn't raise my eyebrows a bit. If it's a miracle mix, why isn't the darn thing patented yet? I recently came across an article link on Yahoo! that addressed the cost-saving advantages of homemade laundry detergent over store-bought versions, and whether or not we really need to use laundry detergent at all. I, for one, am hoping that's a faster growing trend than what seems to be a retail obsession with Method brand products.