The Laundry Tarts

What's powdery, white, made in Canada, smells delicious, and got the funky smell right out of my daughter's cloth diapers?   It's a magnificent new all-natural laundry detergent from The Laundry Tarts.  With delicious flavours scents such as Key Lime Pie, Black Forest Cake, and Oatmeal Almond, it's hard to believe you're not supposed to just spoon this stuff into a bowl for dessert.  I received two sample bags of The Laundry Tarts detergent from Monkey Doodlez, one Key Lime Pie, one Pina Colada (thank you!).  The first thing I noticed when I opened the shipping envelope was the lovely scent wafting up to meet my nose.  I'm not talking about anything strong or overpowering, rather, it was more of a subtle scent, clean and fresh, but not artificial or perfumey.  That's probably because the entire bag of laundry detergent contains only natural ingredients - there is nothing artificial about it.  The entire product line of detergent, stain remover, and shaker is (to quote their website) "hypoallergenic, 100% vegan and free of phosphates, EDTA, pthalates, parabens, SLS, SLES, nitrates, sulphites and chlorine".  Try saying that five times fast!  The ingredient list is shorter than you could even imagine, consisting mainly of baking soda, soda wash, powdered hydrogen peroxide, and sea salt.  Throw in some rosemary extract, saponified canola & coconut oils, and essential oils (for fragrance), and you've got yourself a bag of detergent.  It's safe for your clothes, your skin, and the environment.

I was at first skeptical about using this detergent with my daughter's cloth diapers.  As you can read in previous posts, I launder her pocket diapers & liners every 3 days, using EcoNuts, cold soak, hot wash, and double cold rinse, then I hang them to dry.  They have always come out clean, but often they smell a little funky.  On occasion, I can chalk this up to FORGETTING to toss in the bag of EcoNuts after the soak cycle (shame on me!), other times I have blamed my timing - I tend to do the soak/wash/rinse before bed, and the 2nd rinse the next morning, before hanging them out.  I figured that leaving them in the washer overnight is what caused them to sometimes pick up a funky smell.  However, it seems I might be wrong about that - after checking on The Laundry Tarts' website to make certain the detergent is safe for cloth diapers (it totally is), I followed the same process (using 3 tablespoons for my old school top loading washer) and found that the entire load of diapers smelled really fresh and clean the next morning when I was hanging them out.  Note that they did NOT smell of fragrance, artificial perfumes, or funk.  They just smelled clean.  After hanging them out to dry, I took them in and thought they looked even whiter than usual, and they were SO FREAKING SOFT - perhaps the sea salt in the detergent helped with that?  I continued to use the diapers on my daughter and there were no unusual effects, rashes, etc, that sometimes happen when switching detergents.  I'm sure she'll be thrilled when she grows up that I used her as a diaper detergent guinea pig.

I also tried using the detergent with a load of dark laundry, to make sure it rinsed clean (it did, even with a very full load of laundry, a cold wash cycle, and only a single rinse).  It even worked on my delicates and hand-wash items.  Which I wash in my machine on the delicate cycle, because honestly, is a mom supposed to have time to hand wash anything??  After washing a load of towels & facecloths with The Laundry Tarts detergent, I did one of those goofy comparisons like they used to do in fabric softener commercials... I stacked up 5 baby facecloths that were previously laundered (probably with EcoNuts), and 5 that were laundered using The Laundry Tarts, and sure enough, the stack laundered with The Laundry Tarts was taller.  I probably should have taken a photo (oops) but didn't think of it.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

Now taller stacks of facecloths are not usually a reason for me to choose one detergent over another.  But I have to say that the ability of The Laundry Tarts to brighten my diaper laundry, rinse out clean, and leave them smelling fresh instead of funky, is enough to make me want to buy a big ol' bag of this stuff. I will probably re-purpose an old measuring cup to work as a scoop for the detergent, because as of right now, it does not come with its own measuring scoop.  They recommend using 2-4 tbsp per load (half that for HE machines) so you do need to be able to get the right amount out of the bag and into your machine.  I just used one of my kitchen tablespoons for testing the samples, but when it becomes a permanent fixture in my laundry room, I would want a dedicated scoop.

If you love the fact that The Laundry Tarts detergent is all-natural, made in Canada, and (most importantly) great at getting your laundry clean, then you should also know that they have generously offered a discount code for15% off all Laundry Tarts products (detergent, samples, stain sticks and shaker bon bons) at www.monkeydoodlez.com and participating retailers.  To take advantage of this offer be sure to enter the code "geekmommy15" (without the quotes) when you are going through the checkout process.  Note that they've indicated that their shipping quotes are not working quite right on the Monkey Doodlez site, so please disregard the shipping quotes from the site and they will provide you with a correct total in an invoice prior to processing payment.  This discount expires in 7 days (so by September 20th!) so hurry if you are interested!  I know I'll be ordering some!

*Disclaimer:  Geekmommy Reviews was given free of charge two small samples of the product(s) to review in exchange for featuring this product on http://www.geekmommyreviews.com.  Any opinions or statements given above come only from Geekmommy Reviews and were not influenced in any way by the product vendor.