In this day and age, people are becoming more and more aware about the chemicals that surround us, and the effects they can & do have on our health and comfort. Although our family is blessed with good health and no known chemical sensitivities/allergies, I do try to choose products with minimal impact on our health and on the cleanliness of our environment (most of the time...). I first tried Eco Nuts Natural Laundry Soap last year, when I purchased a couple of boxes on Baby Half Off (http://www.babyhalfoff.com). I was skeptical about how they would work, given that they are just little shriveled up brown things, but they do work, and they work at least as well as any of the laundry detergents I'd been using before. They are great for cloth diapers, but I use them for all of our laundry needs.
They go in your wash, 5 nuts to a bag (bags are included in the boxes of nuts), and the bag lasts 5-10 washes, depending on your water & whether you're washing in hot or cold. I let the bags dry between uses, which seems to make them last longer, and also makes it easier to tell when the nuts are "used up" they get brittle when they are ready to be replaced. The bag of Eco Nuts Natural Laundry Detergent stays in for the wash & rinse cycle, does not leave any residue on your laundry, and has no fragrance. The clean clothes have a slight odor of vinegar when wet, but no smell at all once they are dry. I thought it was kind of strange that you could wash the clothes in cold water, rinse in cold water, leaving the bag of Eco Nuts in for both cycles, and still have the clothes end up clean without residue, but it works great, and the hint of saponin (active "ingredient" of the soap nuts) acts as a fabric softener when you put clothes in the dryer, so they come out extra fluffy.
Once the Eco Nuts are "used up", they are in fact not useless - I haven't tried it yet, but apparently you can make hand soap or natural cleaners from them by soaking them in hot water. Or, if you're like me, you can put them in the compost. No mess and no plastic bottles to throw out when you've used them up - Eco Nuts come in simple biodegradable packaging. Since they are all natural, they are perfectly safe for septic systems too. Oh - and the price is right - less than $0.10 per load!
I should probably include a link! Check out Eco Nuts Natural Laundry Detergent and other eco cleaning products here at http://www.econutssoap.com/
EDIT: A few people have expressed concern because their children have nut allergies, and would they also be allergic to Eco Nuts? Eco Nuts on their Facebook page answered this way: "Eco Nuts are actually a fruit and not a nut and are used successfully by many people with severe nut allergies. Eco Nuts are in the lychee/horse chestnut/maple family, so if your child has any reactions to any products from those trees, do a patch test, first."
Wow! That's awesome! I use biodegradable detergent from costco but it would be neat to try this out as well. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteI started the process of ordering them but found myself at the time questioning if they are really a "nut". Our son has severe allergies to nuts. But, having ad that happy to hear you enjoy them. I'll have to look further into them.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - the Eco Nuts website describes them as fruit shells so I don't *think* they would trigger nut allergies. But you may want to confirm with an allergist just in case: "Eco Nuts™ are completely sustainable dried fruit shells that come from the Sapindus mukorossi tree (also called the Soap Berry or Soap Nut Tree) in Nepal, India and Indonesia."
ReplyDeletethey're really a berry/fruit. they dry into a hard shell that is very nut-like so some well meaning but unscientific person called them a nut instead of soap-fruit.
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