How it works
One sheet cleans. One dose of softener conditions the fibre and carries the scent. The only thing worth getting right is where each one goes — and most people get one of them wrong.
The wash
Put it in first, then the clothes on top, so it's in the water from the moment the cycle starts. A sheet in the drawer is a sheet stuck to the drawer.
Never in the drum. The machine holds it back and releases it in the final rinse, after the detergent has gone — that timing is the whole point.
The enzymes are built for it. Save the hot cycles for bedding and towels, where you're washing for hygiene rather than for cleaning power.
The drawer
Pull the drawer all the way out and you'll find three. Only one of them is for softener.
Read the symbols, not the positions
The order changes from machine to machine — on some the flower sits in the middle, on others at the end. I is pre-wash and you will almost never use it. II is the main wash. The one with the flower is softener. Fill it to the max line and never past it — overfilling makes the machine siphon it away early, which is the most common reason people think softener "doesn't work".
How much
One sheet, one normal load
Tear one in half for a small load or a single shirt. Two for a heavily soiled or very full drum.
One capful of softener, to the max line
The line is a limit, not a target. Less is fine. More is not better — it is the thing that stops it working.
Same scent in both
The sheet and the softener are built to the same fragrance, so nothing fights. It is why the scent is still there at the end of the day rather than gone by lunchtime.
How to judge it properly
Don't smell the bottle. Wash a shirt, dry it fully, then smell it eight hours later. The gap between what a detergent smells like wet and what it smells like at the end of a day tells you everything.
