Steadily, for the past several years I’ve liked to make lifestyle changes to help reduce my footprint. Yes, I understand that one person cannot change the world, and a bunch of people cannot change the world for that matter, BUT we can all makes all changes little by little to help our Earth.
That said, recently I stumbled across washing agents called soap nuts. Soap nuts are berries that have been used since the ancient times for washing and for medicinal purposes. They create a washing agent when mixed with water so I’ve been using them in replan of laundry detergent. MY skin is extremely sensitive in the first place so I need to use laundry soap that doesn’t have fragrance. These soap nuts are derived from plants, have no sent, and apparently do just as good a job as your run of the mill detergent.
To use these, I take a few and put them in a tiny porous bag and throw them in the wash with the rest of my things. After a few cycles, you compost the soap nuts, and use a few more for the next few cycles. When I was doing research on these, I read that even though the washer doesn’t suds up like it does with regular detergent, doesn’t mean it’s not cleaning your clothes. Traditional laundry soap is just SO concentrated, AND people correlate seeing suds as being clean.
So far, they have been getting the job done. Of course, I am not rolling around in the mud all day everyday, so I can’t speak on the effectiveness of heavy duty stains, but for my day-to-day clothes, these seem to work just fine and don’t seem to have an effect on my skin.
Will I continue to use regular laundry detergent? Yes. If I have clothes that are extremely dirty and need a little extra TLC. But, rather than buying a new laundry detergent each month, I will only need to buy it every half a year or so.
xoxo,e
