You Gotta Catch It But You Can't Catch It All! (Colour Catcher)

Member Name: janharper

Product:	Colour Catcher
Date:	08/09/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Allow mixed wash loads

Disadvantages: Doesn't cope with items if the dye runs

Dylon colour catcher is a great way to cut down on the number of washing loads you have to do. Using this product means that you can wash coloured and white items together without your whites picking up the colour, or going grey.

I bought a trial pack of these sheets for just £1 at Poundland. You get 5 in a packet for your money, so I thought they might be worth trying. They are easy to spot because of their bright red packaging.

The product consists of sheets of fabric stuff that feels like thick tissue paper. These sheets are about the size of two sheets of toilet paper (sorry for the comparison but that's the closest thing I could thing of size wise.) There is a very faint perfume-like smell to these sheets but it isn't anything definite.

They are simple to use and you just put one sheet at the back of the drum in your washing machine and wash the load as normal. You don't need to sort whites from coloured, or wash dark items separately which sounds like a really good time and money saver if, like me, you only wash for one person.

When the load is finished you will see that the sheet has picked up colour, or gone kind of grey as it absorbed the loose colour that came out into the water.

This does work well and I have washed white underwear with coloured tee-shirts and you would never know my whites were washed with coloureds.

However, the other day I had a navy blue towel which I have had for about five years, so it has been washed lots of times and I don't worry much about the colour running. I have always washed it with dark clothes just in case but I thought that since I was using Colour Catcher it would be okay to put it in with other things.

I was disappointed. The sheet was blue when I removed it from the washing machine, but so were two very light coloured pillow cases and a face flannel.

This product does work if you want to wash a mixed load of whites and coloureds that you know won't run, but it cannot cope with loose dye from things like dark coloured towels.

I thought the whole idea of the product was to allow mixed washes but it certainly needs to be used with care.

I have just bought the new Vanish 2 in 1 stain magnets which are similar to look at but catch loose colour as they remove stains. A review on this will follow as soon as I have tried them. I certainly won't buy the Dylon ones again.

Summary: Not really worth buying as this only works sometimes.