All four shirts going from clean to ruined, slowed down so you can see what I started with.
I stained four shirts on purpose. The sheets got them all out.
Four shirts. Four common stains. Same wash routine. Honest results from a HeySunday employee.
I've been a HeySunday employee and customer for more than two years. It's been one of the most fulfilling jobs of my life. I work for a company that's constantly engaged in community action — we donate free loads of laundry to more than 200 charities across the U.S. — and every pack we sell is a plastic jug that never goes to a landfill, a gallon of water that was never mixed with harsh chemicals just to ship liquid detergent across the country. Small company, big mission. I love getting to shape it.
What I don't love is the conversation I keep having with friends. They tell me they prefer liquid or pods because "those actually clean." I stand on the other side of a wall I can't seem to take down: friends who are sure the sheets won't work, and a roster of more than 10,000 customers who became subscribers in our first year and are still getting a pack delivered every month. It is an infuriating gap to close.
So with the green light from my boss, I went and bought four white shirts, four of the worst common household stains I could think of, and I set out to show you exactly what HeySunday can clean.
A note before we get started, because the internet has trained all of us to be skeptical: my goal here is not to convince you that laundry sheets are a new cleaning miracle. They aren't. The detergent inside a HeySunday sheet is the same kind of detergent you've been using your whole life — protease enzymes, plant-based surfactants, the things that actually break stains apart. The format is what changed, not the chemistry.
What you're about to see is how a few sheets and a little cold water take out wine, grass and dirt, coffee, and ketchup and mustard.
Red wine
Red wine is the stain people tell me about the most. It's also the one that creates the most "this detergent didn't work" stories, because red wine sets fast and stains the way ink stains. Once it dries on cotton, the tannins bind to the fibers, and from then on it's a chemistry problem more than a cleaning problem.
I poured a splash of red wine on the front of the shirt, let it sit for about a minute (long enough to look like the spill that happens at a dinner party where nobody runs for the kitchen fast enough), and then ran it through the process above.
Grass and dirt
Grass is a green pigment (chlorophyll) plus a protein structure trapped together with whatever soil came along for the ride. It's the stain category almost every parent I know has given up on — especially for white soccer socks and the back-of-the-shirt slides at recess.
I grabbed a handful of grass from my yard along with the small clump of dirt that came with it, ground it into the shirt with the heel of my hand, and added a little more dirt for good measure. Same process: two minutes in the sink, three sheets, cold cycle.
Coffee
Coffee is the stain I'm most personally invested in, because I have ruined a lot of shirts to it. Black coffee is a tannin stain (same chemistry family as red wine), and it loves cotton.
I let a freshly brewed cup sit on my desk, picked it up, and let half of it pour straight down the front of the test shirt — the way it would happen during an honest morning. I let the stain sit while I made another cup, then ran the shirt through the same process.
Ketchup and mustard
This is the cookout stain. Ketchup is a tomato-and-vinegar stain that lifts pretty cleanly. Mustard is the harder one — turmeric is a natural dye and a known troublemaker in laundry, especially on white. Together they're the stain combination most people associate with "this shirt is just done."
I gave myself a generous serving of both, smeared them around with a paper towel so they had real contact with the fibers, and started the timer.
The sheet format isn't the limiting factor. It's the same kind of detergent your grandmother used in a jug, packaged in a way that doesn't require shipping water across the country in plastic. That's the entire pitch. The cleaning part is just laundry chemistry, and it works.
