Towels are generally not very dirty, which is why you are probably seeing excess suds. Lower the detergent by 50% and see if that helps. Don't lower it too much or you'll have dingy whites again, but that's a good place to start.

Personally, no, I don't use less detergent on towels. I wash towels with all my other white cottons -- kitchen towels & dishcloths, washcloths, socks. I use a normal amount of detergent, very warm to hot water (125°F to 140°F depending on the load), at least 1 to 1-1/2 tablespoon of STPP, and usually 2 oz. of oxybooster.

Personally, I wouldn't cut the amount of detergent by half, but I would cut it by 1/4.

Vinegar in the final rinse (about 1/2 cup) will help to 'cut' detergent out of towels.

I have found using powder detergent on towel helps tremendously on keeping towels fresh, soft and fluffy. I think liquids coat the towels too much and doesn't rinse as well as powders do. I keep a box of Tide HE or Gain HE on hand to use on towels and use approx 3/4 of the scoop provided depending on the size of the load.

For kitchen & cleaning towels I don't decrease the detergent, but they usually aren't big suds-producers. For bath towels (which can generate a lot of suds) I go with the 1/2 dose rule even with Persil Megaperls because, as someone stated, they usually don't get that dirty and I'm washing them on hot anyway which helps the cleaning no matter what.

You mentioned Vaska -- I had commented in another thread a while back about that detergent. I found it to be *extremely* sudsy, almost as if it wasn't an HE detergent or they'd left out some critical anti-foaming element of it. And this was made hugely worse if you had a washer with an internal heater (like the Nexxt 500 you and I both have!) which just turned the suds into a hot foam that was very difficult to rinse out. This was especially bad with towels since they suds up a lot anyway.

Switching to Persil and dropping the dosage helped get rid of my suds issues.

In general I've found the Nexxt 500 can really bring out the suds during a rinse cycle, possibly due to the big paddles and significant wash action which just whips 'em up again, so I always use Rinse Plus and Bleach options. The Bleach option just adds another rinse if you leave the dispenser empty, as near as I can tell.

Good luck!

Thanks, everybody, for the ideas. I may well go back to powdered Cheer detergent for my towels, as I never had trouble with oversudsing with the powder detergent. With a load of clothes I've never had trouble with the Vaska oversudsing, but maybe the combination of washing towels and turning the heat up (I have white towels) is causing my sudsing problem.

I appreciate everyone's input.

I'm not using a front loader so I don't have as much issue with sudsing, however I personally like to use the same amount of detergent and occasionally if the load is very dirty I might even use some more. I wash washcloths with the towels and considering the bacteria, skin particles on the towels and such, I want to clean those things. I'm more apt to use the same, or as said even a touch more even if it requires an extra rinse cycle. JM2¢W

One problem that happens with bath towels is when dry off after bathing you may still have some soap residue on your body and this is transfered to the towels. I've found by using a hot wash and about 1/4 less than normal detergent that this will limit the sudsing and the towels still come out clean. Occasionally I have to prove the soap in the towels theory for customers by taking towels from the bath and washing them with no detergent then showing them the suds created. Once they see this they understand.