TLDR: Washing machine is lousy at washing. Is it fixable?
Our 7 year old HE front-loading Frigidaire washing machine does a lousy job actually washing the clothes. It's fine on items that aren't really dirty (e.g. professional clothing for work), but does a lousy job of washing things that are actually dirty like my kids clothing, napkins, etc. And I'm not even super finicky about cleanliness -- for example, I have no problem with my kids clothing being stained, but I do expect things to smell good coming out of the machine & I expect it to remove dirt that I can brush off, superficial bits of food on the napkins, etc. Our machine fails at both.
We do not have hard or soft water. I have already tried a wide variety of detergents including Charlie's Soap, Seventh Generation, Tide, All, Biokleen, several store brands, etc. & I've tried adding oxyclean and bleach (for colorfast things like the napkins). I've tried using more soap, I've tried using less soap. I've tried the various baking soda and vinegar recipes to "strip" detergents out of the washer. So far, none of those things have really made an appreciable difference.
So my questions to the group:
What can I do to improve the washing efficiency of the current washing machine? Are there mechanical fixes that I'm unfamiliar with that might help improve the performance?
Should I just give up on this machine & buy a new one? I hate to replace the machine if it's fixable.
What washing machines do people recommend? The LGs and Samsungs get great reviews and are water and energy efficient. But they're super expensive & it's unclear if the people reviewing are actually washing truly dirty stuff.
I'm just super frustrated & want to do the "mustachian" and environmentally friendly thing and make this machine actually do what I need it to do so I don't have to get rid of it. But I'm running out of ideas & the frequent need to "rewash" stuff that doesn't get clean is a huge time sink & waste of resources. After trying so many things to improve the performance, I'm reaching the point where I want to throw money at the problem by buying the fanciest best reviewed machine on the market. Definitely a NOT mustachian solution.
I really appreciate any help / assistance this group can provide!