Laundry detergent. The detergent instructions, coming from a biased manufacturer, will always tell you to use waaaaay too much in order to encourage consuming more. They stuff them with scents so that you can tell they are working and have a constant reminder with you about your purchasing decision. It’s bad for the washing machine- residues stick around and can clog things up and cause moving parts to wear out faster. In fact, washing machine manufacturers often recommend running loads of towels without adding any detergent a few times regularly just to clean out the excess.

I could always feel it on my skin and feel suffocated by it. When I lived in an apartment, most of the rest of the building was from some Caribbean country and used some expticly scented detergent in the shared laundry machines, so unless I wanted to spend time and money to run empty cycles I had to just deal with it. I’m so grateful now to have a house with my own machines that only see my own, unscented, detergent and in reasonable amounts. And it gets cleaning cycles regularly.