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Growing up, my mom used Pine Sol to clean everything around our home and taught me to do the same. When I moved to New York at 18, I learned that my new Queens- and Manhattan-born friends were all about Fabuloso. I used the two products faithfully throughout my adult life and was perfectly satisfied with how well they worked. When I noticed a few months ago that both brands—as well as others I trusted, like Mr. Clean—were rolling out new “2x concentrated” formulas, I wasn’t sure what to think. If something isn’t broken, I don’t seek to fix it, you know? I took note of price differences and wondered if it was, perhaps, a gimmick. (In addition to teaching me about the wonders of Pine Sol, my mom also taught me to be deeply distrustful of marketing.) The price of 80 ounces of double-concentrated Pine Sol is between $15 and $20, depending on various discounts, while 96 ounces of regular Pine Sol comes in at $18.49. Broken down, the more concentrated version was spendier by a tad—but was it worth it?
After using the new Pine Sol formulation for a few months, I can say that yes, it is worth it—but to be on the safe side, I conducted what I consider a very scientific experiment today with my standard Fabuloso and its double-concentrated counterpart.
The Fabuloso experiment
This week, Fabuloso sent me their newest scent to test out. I was excited about this because I love things that smell like peaches, but didn’t realize I’d signed up for a 2x concentrated version. When I opened it, I was even more excited because I already had a full bottle of regular Fabuloso on hand, which meant I could do a true comparison. The first part of that comparison is price: The 56-ounce bottle of 2x-concentrated Fabuloso is $5.49 and 48 ounces of the regular stuff will run you $4.59. That’s 10 cents per ounce either way, though I know these prices vary. What you pay at your local corner store is different than what you pay at Walmart and that’s to say nothing about the fluctuating prices and sales on Amazon. I even found a 56-ounce bottle of 2x-concentrated Fabuloso for 10 cents cheaper than the standard formula at Target. Generally speaking, you’re looking at spending around $5, give or take, no matter which formula you choose.
Now, for the cleaning power. First, I spent some time this morning looking around my home to find the dirtiest spot. I unearthed a baseboard that had been hidden by a shelf for a long time. It was disgusting. Perfect!
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Then, I set about figuring out how to compare these two products in the most responsible, scientific way. I settled on splitting the baseboard in half and using the same exact amount of each formula to scrub one side or the other. I used one capful as my amount and split a paper towel down the middle so each capful would be distributed evenly across the same amount of towel. This is how science gets done. Here is the left half of the baseboard, cleaned with normal Fabuloso:
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
And here is how the section looked when I used the 2x-concentrated formula to clean the other half:
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Fabuloso experiment results
Here’s the thing: Both of these products do the same job. The cleanliness of the baseboard overall is not in question after using either product. What is truly different is the cleaning process. I counted how many swipes of my paper towel it took to remove the dirt from each side of the baseboard. With the normal Fabuloso, I was looking at about 25 swipes. With the concentrated version, the number of swipes was seven. This means, per my findings, you need less product or less effort to get your desired result. Even if the 2x-concentrated Fabuloso cost a lot more than the normal one, which it doesn’t really, it would be worth it, which is the same conclusion I came to after needing to use significantly less of the double-concentrated Pine Sol than I would of the normal version over the last few months, too.
Something else I’ve noticed is that the smell is stronger in the concentrated version. For me, that’s a major selling point. I don’t just want things to look and feel clean, but smell clean, too, and the 2x-concentrated cleaners that I have used have all had stronger scents than their standard contemporaries and those stronger scents have lasted longer, too. I completed my Fabuloso experiment about 45 minutes ago and can still smell the double-concentrated peach scent. The lavender, unfortunately, has already started to dissipate.
Overall, I recommend these concentrated formulas and consider them a quality innovation on the part of Big Cleaning. In what I can only hope will be the long years of my life, I am sure to run into more gimmicks and money grabs, but I do not consider this to be among them.