I Just Discovered This 131-Year-Old Stain Remover, and It’s So Effective

Written by

Barbara Bellesi Zito
Barbara Bellesi Zito
Barbara Bellesi Zito is a freelance writer from Staten Island, covering all things real estate and home improvement. When she's not watching house flipping shows or dreaming about buying a vacation home, she writes fiction. Barbara's debut novel is due out later this year.
published Feb 4, 2025
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
A pink laundry room with green cabinetry and lemon wallpaper

I’m all for advances in technology and science — especially when it comes to laundry — but I’m also very happy to lean on tried-and-true methods for stain removal. So when I learned on Apartment Therapy about a very old-school product that has been getting thousands of rave reviews on Amazon, it was a no-brainer to click “add to cart.”

Now, I’ve heard of laundry soap before, but shame on me for not knowing about the Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap Bar in particular. Why? Oh, it’s only been around since 1894. But I will give myself a pass — because with a brand that has that kind of longevity, who needs to take out a multimillion-dollar commercial spot during the big game?

You might be thinking, A bar of soap to do laundry? Sure, detergent comes in many convenient forms, including liquid, powder, and even sheets. But I promise you that Fels-Naptha couldn’t be any easier to use.

How to Use Fels-Naptha for Your Laundry

  1. As a stain pre-treatment. Wet the stain, then rub it with the bar. Wait a minute, then wash as normal.
  2. As a laundry booster. Grate 1/16th of the bar into the washer with detergent. (You could also use a vegetable peeler.) Then wash as normal.
Credit: Barbara Bellesi Zito

I latched onto this as a stain remover rather than a detergent additive. I rubbed a bit on some weird oily stain on a top and it worked like magic. However, my favorite use for it is to clean my makeup brushes. I once saw a celebrity makeup artist use a bar of laundry soap (she used Zote, which is similar) to clean her brushes, so I finally decided to give it a try. What a game changer! All I did was wet the brush, and then rub the bristles over and over on the soap to clean it. 

I do find that it’s easier to wet the bar itself, but I didn’t want to cause the whole thing to disintegrate faster — it is soap, after all. Rather than grate or peel it, I sliced the bar into smaller chunks. Pro tip: It cuts less like a stick of butter and more like a block of Parmigiano Reggiano, so if you go this route, use a sharp knife and keep those shards of soap from any pets that might mistake it for cheese. 

Credit: Barbara Bellesi Zito


In addition to keeping a chunk of this in a plastic baggie with my makeup so I remember to clean my brushes regularly, I keep the rest of the bar on a shelf in my laundry room. There’s still some other liquid stain remover on the shelf that I will probably finish — but now that Fels-Naptha is a part of my life, I don’t see the need to buy liquid stain remover again.