green up your laundry with soap nuts!

October 15, 2010 at 1:28 pm (For Kids, Green Living, Recipes)
Tags: green living, laundry, natural products, soap, soap nuts

i have been gifted with what i consider to be two fairly fun and healthy qualities….i’m a skeptic when it comes to “miracle products,” those things in life that just sound too good to be true, but i’m also willing to try (nearly) anything once, in order to see for myself.  such a little scientist–i know.  well, when i first heard of soap nuts, i thought it sounded, well….. nuts!  but let me back up a bit.

i’ve always on some level detested the smell of fabric softener and really perfume-y laundry detergent.  (ask my husband to describe the face i make when we walk past that aisle in target! if hell had a smell, it would be that of gain) but that’s what “people” use, so that’s what i used.  then came the barrage of “free and clear” type laundry soaps, prompted by the recent explosion in allergic reactions to harsh chemicals. (go figure….i mean have you read the ingredients?  does laundry soap even list ingredients??  ingredients: cancer, sad bunny rabbits, may contain trace elements of childrens’ tears)  free and clear was ok.  it at least cut down on the smell.  but then there were still all of the environmental concerns that go along with detergents (although many free and clear types are sulfite free at least), and there was the cost….you want how much for that jug of goop??  i knew there had to be a better way, but since i rent an apartment, i hadn’t gotten up the nerve to see just how much dr. bronner’s you could put in a washing machine before it flooded the floor with minty suds (we’re all-one! all-one! all-one or none!!!)

so i was walking through organic harvest in hoover one day, and i noticed this odd bag of ugly little brown….somethings–i had no clue what….. and it was labeled “soap nuts.”  they were buy-one-get-one, so i figured, what the hell–why not?  my husband is very patient and used to much weirdness when it comes to what i bring home from the store, so i knew my “we’re not going to use detergent in our wash this week” would be met with a trusting and only slightly terrified “ok, sweetie!”

so it turns out that “soap nuts” are just dried hulls of lychee berries–a fruit that can be found in temperate and tropical regions all over the world.  they have been used as a natural soap for thousands of years, and some of the latin names (sapindus detergens, sapindus saponaria, etc.) basically denote them as the Soapy McSoapingtons of the plant world.  (saponins are the chemical constituents that we think of as “soapy”–they lather, bubble, and leave you feeling squeaky clean).

 

go nuts with soap nuts!

 

so i got the pack of soap nuts and a cotton muslin bag, and i got to work experimenting with washing my clothes in fruit—yes i felt silly the first time i tried it.  BUT…. it turns out it works!  i took 4-5 soapnuts, placed them in a cotton bag, threw the bag in the washer with the clothes, and they actually got clean…..we’re talking socks and underwear here people!  the bag can be reused 3-4 times (you’ll know when the nuts have lost their soap-oompf because they’ll get floppy and start to lose their color).  then you just toss them and fill the bag with more nuts.  i can’t even begin to count how long it took us to go through those two bags…..maybe a year?  and all for ten bucks!

so i ran out of soap nuts a month or two ago and was contemplating a drive back up to hoover when i came across a lovely lady who was selling them at the homegrown alabama farmer’s market at canterbury chapel.  this lovely lady’s name is melissa, and she’s the owner of a company called the cheeky maiden soap co.  (great stuff! check it out!)  anyway, i bought a bag from cheeky maiden, brought it home, and thought to myself, “there has got to be a better way to do this than fishing this damned cotton bag out of the laundry every time!”  i’m telling you–i can’t begin to count the number of times the poor thing made it through the dryer, only to be discovered in a pants leg later in the week.

 

cheeky nuts

 

i noticed that cheeky maiden’s soap nuts were fresh, bright, and so fully of resiny saponins that they stuck to my fingers and to each other–this was a huge difference from the crunchy, dried up soap nuts that i’d bought earlier.  noticing this, i thought to myself, “i wonder if i can boil the heck out of these, drain them, freeze the liquid in ice-cube trays, and then just pop two soap cubes in my wash each time?”

and voila–my laundry was revolutionized!

*note–essential oils are great to use with soap nuts, but don’t add them until you’re actually running the wash.  i added mine to the soap nut soup before i froze it, and for weeks my food tasted faintly of oranges and rose.  not good.  also, make lots at a time and then pop them out into a gallon freezer bag for easy freezer storage.

soap nut cubes recipe:

ingredients:

soap nuts
water
ice cube trays
gallon ziplock bag

step 1.  add 8-10 soap nuts to a quart of water and bring to a boil.

step 2.  reduce heat to medium (to help prevent soapy bubbling over), cover, and simmer for 20 minutes

step 3.  strain out the soap nuts, giving them a good hard squeeze.

step 4.  pour the liquid into ice cube trays, freeze overnight, then bag and store (they have a bit of a smell but don’t leave a smell on your laundry)

i use two cubes for a regular load of wash–feel free to use more for particularly filthy things.   again, i love to add essential oils to my wash, but i don’t put them in the liquid as it’s freezing b/c the smell will take over both fridge and freezer.

soap nuts are safe for our babies, for their diapers, for your pets, for our rivers…. and they really do work!

but don’t take it from me!

squeaky clean blessings!