One of the best things about working at Wirecutter is having access to exceptionally discerning experts on a wide range of topics. Have a mold problem in your house? Liam McCabe is just a Slack message away. Want to revive a pilly sweater? Zoe Vanderweide’s got you.And when it comes to laundry, Andrea Barnes is the preeminent expert on getting things clean. Even as someone who has been knee-deep in cleaning for years now, I’m always learning something new from Andrea about the chemistry of laundry detergents and how the ingredients in each formula work together to get stains and odors out of clothing.She explained to me, for example, that instead of adding borax to weaker laundry detergent for better odor removal, I could save time and money by using one of our laundry detergent picks instead. And since I’m sensitive to scent and artificial fragrance, Andrea suggested Tide Free & Gentle. In our testing, Tide Free & Gentle's formula proved to be excellent at odor removal.And, as it turns out, Tide Free & Gentle is great for pretreating stains too, especially greasy or oily ones. I took this advice, but to make pretreating easier, I put Tide in a spray bottle with just enough water to get it to flow easily from the nozzle (about 70% detergent and 30% water). If you’re going to try this, be sure to clearly label the bottle to note its contents, as with any other chemical in your home, and store it out of reach of small children or pets.