Confusing caps: Don't oversuds your duds

As the jugs of laundry detergent in the supermarket get smaller and lighter, the liquid detergent within is becoming more concentrated. The containers are easier to lug home, but the variety of confusing caps is no help on laundry day. Some of the caps' fill lines are hard to decipher, and the line for the largest load may be only halfway up the cap. Here are five we found particularly vexing in our laundry detergent tests. To avoid overdosing, use a permanent marker to highlight the fill lines.

Purex vs. Purex. (In photo, from left to right.) Both bottles, found side by side on a store shelf, contain 50 fluid ounces and claim 33 loads. Why the different caps? The company launched the newer, wider one, a customer rep said, to standardize its cap sizes.

Silly claim. "50% more loads," says the 75-ounce bottle of Xtra. Great … until you read the fine print: "vs. 50 oz. detergents."

X marks the spot. Era 2X Ultra contains 50 ounces and does 32 loads, two more than Tide Plus Febreze, whose bottle makes no Ultra or X claim. And 32 ounces of 3X Ultra All? It does 28 loads.

Easy does it. Sometimes the fill lines are so close together (about one-sixteenth inch between two doses in the Era cap) that you'd need an eyedropper to measure properly.

Hidden lines. You can't see the lines in the All cap, but neither could we, unless we held it an inch from our eyes.

—Kimberly Janeway