Soap Nuts

Soap nuts are perhaps the best way to deal with kitchen messes in a chemical free way.

As the northern areas of the US are feeling the chill, more time spent indoors is around the corner. Another thing is more indoor cooking and that means more kitchen messes to clean up.

With cooler weather homemade soup is on many people’s menus these days. Homemade soups and sauces can cause a major mess on the stove top. Cleaning those stuck on messes from your counter-top is as easy as spraying some homemade soap nuts liquid onto the mess, letting it sit for a few seconds and woosh … as my mother would say “ALL GONE”.

Another place that takes a beating in the kitchen is the refrigerator. Come on no matter how super a housekeeper you are thawing meats mean caked on blood in the refrigerator and vegetables you forgot you had mean goo and stench in the crisper drawer. It’s happened to all of us.

However, the last thing you want to do is expose all those fresh foods to chemical residue or synthetic fragrances. Think about it your food is closed up inside that moist environment 24 hours a day. Imagine how toxic residue or harsh chemicals hanging in the air along with your food can put your health in jeopardy. Also consider that messes in the back of the refrigerator means leaning in to clean them. Most commerical cleaners are dangerous and irritating if inhaled, even that misty fallout. Soap nuts however pose no such health risk and will not irritate your skin or lungs. Just one more reason to use soap nuts to clean the kitchen!

Again the easiest answer is to put soap nuts liquid in a spray bottle and mist the inside of the drawers, the glass on the shelves, and the doors. Be sure to spray the gaskets around the doors too because this is a favorite spot for mold, fungus, and mildew to grow. Soap nuts being both anti-fungal and anti-bacterial will keep your refrigerator clean and free of the bacteria that causes odors and you won’t be exposing your family to toxic fallout from the cleaner you use.

Now, let’s talk soap nuts and the dishwasher. The jury is out on whether or not soap nuts work well in the dishwasher. One thing I strongly suggest is to grind some soap nuts powder and use it as a quick scouring powder on your dishes with grease, oil, or caked on foods. This will release the mess and make it easier for soap nuts to do their job in the dishwasher. Remember that a part of what makes a surfactant (the saponin in soap nuts) work well is moisture and agitation, but also contact with the item being cleaned. Dishwashers splash the water around, so don’t count on them being a perfect solution. But by all means give it a try. I use soap nuts powder and liquid to hand wash my dishes and I am thrilled with the results.

If you don’t have time to make soap nuts liquid at home using our recipe, then I highly recommend you purchase a bottle of NaturOli’s Extreme 18X. It’s not just a natural laundry detergent, but it can also be diluted with water for all your household cleaning uses.

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Making soap nuts liquid at home is very easy. It’s simply a matter of putting some approximate 15 soap nuts in 6 cups of water in a pot of water and boiling the water, then reducing it to a simmer for about 30 minutes.

But yesterday I started to think about ways that I could make soap nuts liquid just as concentrated without using the electric to boil the water. In essence making soap nuts liquid greener by not using any fossil fuels to create it if possible. After all one of the main reasons I use soap nuts is to reduce my carbon footprint and remove chemicals from my cleaning and personal care environment.

Here are some ideas about ways to make soap nuts liquid at home but to make the whole process greener and more efficient.

Soap Nuts Tea – Solar Power – Sun Tea Versions

Take the equivalent of 20 whole soap nuts and drop them into an empty clear plastic (or glass) container like a 2 liter soda bottle. I used an empty limeade bottle that holds 50 ounces of liquid, which is about 1 1/2 liters. Fill the bottle to just below the neck and place it outside in the sun for approximately 8  hours. Remember to shake the bottle around every couple of hours so that as the soap nuts soften from being in the water the saponin will release in greater concentration. Another helpful note is if you have pieces your soap nuts liquid will be ready faster because the broken pieces have more ready access to the saponin in the soap berry pulp. Alternatively you can crunch the soap nuts up in your hand or mash them up into pieces by any other means you devise.

I decided to be a bit scientific about this to see if there would be an advantage to using soap nuts powder to make the liquid. I have read that many people do this, and I thought as long as I was at it why not give that a try.

Here’s what I did to make soap nuts liquid using soap nuts powder and the power of the sun to get the saponin to release. For this version I used an empty water bottle that holds 3 liters of water.

Take a container similar to the above instructions and pour approximately 5 tablespoons of soap nuts powder into the empty container. Now add the water to just below the neck of the bottle, cap and shake. You will see the color change immediately to a kind of golden to carmel color. I left mine outside overnight right next to the bottle of soap nuts tea I was making using the whole soap berries.

My theory was that since they were side by side and started at approximately the same time I’d be able to see which green soap nuts liquid method was most efficient and concentrated. The 5 tablespoons of soap nuts powder is basically equivalent to 25 soap nuts. So my portions were pretty close especially since I used a slightly larger empty water bottle for the soap nuts powder version.

Now let’s discuss affordability of this method. If you use soap nuts in the laundry 20 soap berries will produce about 20 medium size loads of laundry in a standard washing machine. That’s if you use the generally accepted 4-5 soap nuts in a wash bag for each load and approximately 3-5 loads of laundry from each fresh wash bag.

I just did my first load of laundry using the soap nuts powder based soap nuts liquid. I used 1/8 of a cup of the liquid in a medium load using cold water. That’s approximately 1 fluid ounce. So in theory the 3 liter bottle of soap nuts liquid I made using this greener soap nuts powder method should yield me 101 loads of laundry.

So the same amount of soap nuts powder would only do about 5 loads of laundry because basically you use 2-3 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) of soap nuts powder for a standard load, but by putting the powder into a bottle and setting it in the sun I extracted more saponin from the powder and will get 20 times as many loads.

I’ll let you do the cost analysis on the whole soap berry method of making soap nuts sun tea yourself.

Play with the concentration yourself to if this is a viable green alternative to making soap nuts liquid for yourself without using any electricity. Yes I realize that electric is used to grind the soap nuts powder, but compare less than 2 minutes of grinding soap nuts in a coffee grinder with heating a pot of water to boiling and then simmering it for 30 minutes. Soap nuts are about as green as you can get when it comes to both laundry and cleaning, but if we can find ways to make them even greener, why the heck not.

If you want a great bargain on soap nuts pieces you won’t find a better price than this
NaturOli Soap Nuts PIECES! – 5 lb. bag! (Appox. 800 Loads!) – All Sapindus Mukorossi. 100% Natural Laundry Detergent! (Less than 8 cents PER LOAD!!) – New, Fresh 2009 Harvest NOW SHIPPING!

Once you’ve got your soap nuts sun tea to the concentrate you want, be adventurous and use it as a soap nuts shampoo, chemical free glass cleaner, natural dishwashing soap, chemical free hand soap, or chemical free jewelry cleaner. You’ll be amazed how affordable and naturally you can clean your home and all the green cleaning products you can make using soap nuts tea as the basis.

Also reusing a bottle you already have further reduces recycling making this an even greener way to use soap nuts.

The first load of laundry I did with the soap nuts powder based soap nuts liquid just finished. When I removed the clothes from the washer everything smelled good and clean, even the laundry bag of socks. So this method passed the sniff test.

Since it took me awhile to finish this post the first load is now dry and the results seem great. Lots of soft clean laundry just like I get from soap nuts in a wash bag or stove top soap nuts liquid.

Go ahead … experiment … worst case the soap nuts liquid is less concentrated than you want and you either add more powder or soap berries to it and put it back out in the sun.

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Soap nuts are completely additive free, unlike so many other so-called natural detergents on the market today.

If you are at all concerned about the potential dangers and skin irritations caused by packaged laundry soap and detergents, then soap nuts should move to the top of your must have list.

Besides the lack of disclosure on most cleaning product labels, often even the ingredients that are disclosed are couched in terminology that few can decipher.  Naturally derived is one of my favorite terms to avoid in packaged products. The reason I avoid products with that terminology is that although it may be derived from a natural source, how they extract the natural properties is left to be guessed at.

The buying public are a trusting bunch, and manufacturers know it. They word things in such a way that we feel safe to use their products. The EPA is even in on this now, giving certain products a “stamp of approval” as being safer. Well now don’t we all feel better that they are safer than others in their class.

If you’re interested in reading about the DfE logo and program here’s the link http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/projects/formulat/label.htm

If you’ve never noticed the DfE logo this is what it looks like.

U.S. EPA Design for the Environment logo

I personally will continue to use soap nuts as my choice for laundry and cleaning because I’d rather have an additive free detergent than one that has additives that are simply safer than the additives used by other companies. Let’s remember that there are no regulations on listing in ingredients for cleaning products, they are protected by various governmental agencies to hide behind proprietary formulas and never disclose one single ingredient to us.

Soap nuts are the only truly additive free detergent, because used in their traditional form they are just as nature grew them.

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Soap nuts wash bag hunting may be the only bad thing about using soap nuts.

If you’ve used soap nuts in a larger load or laundry, or with linens you may have had to hunt through your wet laundry to find the wash bag. Heck it may have even ended up in the dryer by accident and not been found until you folded the clothes.

Well we have a tip for you that will end your hunt for your soap nuts wash bag once and for all.

This tip comes to you from my sister, another devoted soap nuts user.

Ready?

Find yourself one of those plastic balls or eggs, the kind that come from gumball machines or you put into an Easter basket. Place the closed plastic egg (or plastic ball) into the wash bag with the soap nuts.

The empty plastic ball will cause the wash bag to rise to the top of the machine at the end of the wash cycke when the water is all drained. If you drop it into the washer in the center near the agitator when you start the load of laundry It will also keep the wash bag closer to the agitator, causing the soap nuts to get some extra bouncing around which will help release the saponin too.

Life with soap nuts is so green, so healthy, and now just a little bit easier.

GET SOAP NUTS! You will be amazed, thrilled, and delighted at how soft and clean your laundry is and all with no chemicals to hurt you, your clothes, or the environment.

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Soap nuts are the answer to “How can I be greener this year?”

Many of us have been trying to make our lives greener in the past months. But for many it poses a challenge, because terms like natural and green are so commonly thrown about by companies who are first and foremost manufacturers of chemicals.

While is it not impossible for a company that produces chemical cleaning products to be greener than their competition. The truth is that most if not all so-called natural detergents, natural cleaning products, and natural personal care products simply are NOT natural, and they are rarely green.

So what is green cleaning exactly? Well, again opinions vary about that, hours spent on the internet searching may not provide an answer that makes that clear.

I’ll share my own version of green cleaning here:

• Derived from a naturally occuring substance with little or no alteration
• Sustainable
• Limited use of fossil fuels to get product to market
• Environmentally friendly packaging (at least recyclable or reusable packaging)
• Limited negative environmental and human impact when used
• Reduced packaging
• Biodegradable
• Multiple uses from a single product

Soap nuts are all of those things and here are the finer points on each aspect from the list above.

Derived from a naturally occuring substance with little or no alteration - Soap nuts are ready for use exactly as nature produced them and require NO alteration (except drying) to be useable.

Sustainable – Soap nuts trees grow naturally in areas of the world where few things will grow because they are drought resistant trees. Each soap nut tree will produce soap berries for up to 90 years. At one time the trees were cut down for lumber, but as the demand for the soap berries has increased the trees are now a source of a product for many decades instead of for lumber. In fact in some areas soap nuts are being plantation grown, again in soil that would grow almost nothing else.

Limited use of fossil fuels to get product to market- Soap nuts are hand harvested by the indigenous peoples in the impoverished areas of the world. The deseeding is also done by hand and they are then left to dry naturally. So basically zero fossil fuel consumption to get them ready to market. Now of course fossil fuels are used in getting them from source to end-consumer, but a major segment of the production chain is zero fossil fuel consumptive.

Environmentally friendly packaging (at least recyclable or reusable packaging) – While this is not true of ALL companies that sell soap nuts, NaturOli hand packs the plain muslin soap nuts bags. Additionally there is no ink or printing on NaturOli’s packaging because in truth they see it as a waste of materials and resources. The tags with the use instructions are printed on recycled paper using soy inks. Only true of NaturOli’s soap nuts. Oh and the bags can be reused for all kinds of things which makes the packaging reusable.

Limited negative environmental and human impact when used - Soap nuts are sold as nature grew them, they are not treated in any way, and because the soap berries are naturally antimicrobial they are even being used to remediate toxic soil in some parts of the world. The trees themselves are resistant to pests and fungus which means that there is no need to treat the trees to protect them from parasitic invaders. Soap nuts actually are used in various forms in Aryuvedic medicine which would lead us to believe they have positive impact on humans.

Reduced packaging- I actually cover this earlier in this post, but soap nuts (as sold by NaturOli) have the most minimal packaging possible. The muslin bag and the tag. NaturOli doesn’t even take the extra resources to attach the tag to the bag, because most of us will just pull it off to read it anyway so why waste the materials to attach it in the first place. Some soap nuts suppliers put a plastic liner inside their muslin bags. They tell us it’s to keep the soap nuts fresh. On the contrary it holds moisture inside and can often cause the soap nuts to begin to pre-release saponins making them VERY sticky. This is not what you want, but it’s off topic and I’ll cover that in another post soon.

Biodegradable – Soap nuts can be tossed on the compost heap once you’ve used them and will biodegrade. If used properly there’s virtually nothing left of them because they’ve almostly completely dissolved before you dispose of them.

Multiple uses from a single product – Many people seek multiple purpose cleaners these days. Hey it’s easier to buy one product and do many clenaing jobs with it. That’s also a green approach becausse the fewer products you buy the less production (in theory) and the less packaging to dispose of or reycle. But in the case of soap nuts the uses are pretty limitless.

Take some time to visit previous entries to see all homemade chemical free cleaning products this one single completely natural product can be used for to clean everything from your toilets to your toenails, your carpets to your cars, your laundry to your linoleum, your pots to your pets, and everything in between.

So, are soap nuts green? I’ll leave the final decision to you, but in my house soap nuts have made green cleaning easy.

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I promised that I would provide soap nuts reviews and share my experiences with each of the soap nuts suppliers I have tried. Rather than provide my reviews in a post I’ve created a page specifically for soap nuts reviews.

I plan to try as many soap nut sources as possible to give you the most in-depth reviews and soap nut comparisons I can.

One of the main reasons I am doing this is that as the word of soap nuts spreads I find the mis-information is also spreading.

For example many unknowing individuals are beginning to infer that all soap nuts are created equal and that one soap nut is no better than another. This is false. I don’t think it is with intent to mislead. I believe they are only sharing what they personally believe to be true.

Why does it matter who I buy soap nuts from, you may ask. Like any living thing there is variation. If we are talking about fruit or vegetables it is common sense that there are superior varieties and inferior (or lesser) varieties. Eat a homegrown tomatoe that’s been vine ripened after you eat a hot house tomato that’s been picked green and allowed to ripen in transit or by being heated and you’ll taste the difference. Both are tomatoes and both will do the “job” of putting color into a dish. The flavor is drastically different however.

The same is only logical when talking about soap nuts. So why is it so easy for buyers of soap nuts to believe that one soap nut is just like another?

Well, we’ve become a society of reading is believing in many ways. We read an email about a terrible computer virus and we send it to everyone we know, but then someone who knows where to look discovers it’s a hoax, but thousands continue to believe it is true.

Okay, let me step down off my soap box (pun intended) and get back to the subject of soap nuts and quality.

If you read the Wikipedia article on Sapindus trees which is the Genus and you will count at least ten listed species. They all produce a fruit that has saponins.

I had read before that one species grows here in Florida where I live, but after a visit to Efloras.org I found that there is even a species that is native to Missouri where I was born and raised. They have one at Missouri Botanical Garden (go figure). Here’s a picture of the Sapindus drummondii growing at MOBOT and it even has fruit on it in the picture. I’m getting my brother to take pictures and send them to me. The tree is the State Champion and is 52 feet tall.

But again I digress. The point is that not all soap nuts will produce the same results and just because the seller thinks they are buying the top quality soap nut from an overseas supplier doesn’t mean that’s what they are getting or selling you.

Why do you care about all this?

If you get lesser quality species of soap nuts then you will get lesser results. You will need to use more soap nuts to do the same quality of cleaning and although you will be protecting the environment and your family from toxic chemicals in laundry detergent and cleaning products you will need to use more soap nuts and the cost benefits will be lost.

This is all common sense I know, but I feel compelled to help you become an informed buyer. Soap nuts are truly amazing. I want people and the environment to benefit by replacing toxic chemical laundry detergents and dishwashing detergent with soap nuts. Please be an informed buyer and don’t assume less expensive is the right way to go. If the total amount spent is less for a bag but you have to use more you’ve diluted the savings. It’s like buying on sale but using your credit card and paying interest.

I have been looking for side by side comparison pictures to help you identify what you are buying versus what you may think you are buying. This article has some pretty good pictures that may help.

http://www.articlesbase.com/skin-care-articles/kinds-of-soapnuts-483428.html.

You will notice a drastic difference between the lesser Sapindus Trifoliatus and the superior quality Sapindus Mukorossi. On that site you will even find pictures of the difference in the “suds” produced by the two species.

In closing, please educate yourself about soap nuts uses, quality, and performance.

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Friday night I had a houseful of dinner guests. Earlier in the week when we were formalizing the time for the dinner, I had shared my discovery and successes using soap nuts with a friend.

My friend is a working mom with two teenage kids. Her son is 15 and a competitive swimmer and her daughter is 12. You can probably imagine her laundry challenges, everything from wet towels to chlorine saturated swimming trunks in addition to the multiple outift changes these teens make every day. Since she works full time in addition to her kids extra-curricular activities you might guess that her time is precious and she may not get to the laundry every day. So for her, soap nuts sounded like a gift from heaven.

I gave her a small plastic bag with about 40 soap nuts in it, figuring this would cover her for a few weeks. I explained that she should put 3-4 soap nuts in the small muslin bag and drop it into the washing machine with her laundry. I also told her that those same 3-4 soap nuts could be used for at least 5 loads of laundry in the same day, and to just drop them in the garbage disposal when they were used. She was so excited to get home and try them. But while we sat on the patio after dinner enjoying coffee I decided to do an informal bit of market reasearch on our other guests. Only one person besides my mate had heard about soap nuts from me, so there wasn’t any predisposed assumption of what they would notice during the touch test.

I took two white towels from my linen closet and brought them out to the patio. One had been washed weeks ago using standard laundry detergent and dried with dyer sheets, the other had been washed with soap nuts and no additional laundry products or dryer sheets to increase softness.

I started with my friend and handed her each towel, asking her only to “feel” them. As I put the second one in her hand she looked up at me and said “Wow this one is really soft!”. I then handed each towel to her teenage son, mixing them up as I handed them to him so he would not be prejudiced. He too noticed the difference in softness.

Since we had music on the outdoor speakers the other guests on the opposite side of the patio had no idea what I was doing or why. Each noticed a difference and immediately asked why I was handing these towels around.

Once everyone had felt the two towels I explained what the “test” was about. They were all thrilled to hear that a natural and affordable chemical free laundry detergent alternative existed, and all wanted to know where to buy them. Each one offered a thought on why soa pnuts would be a great addition to their homes.

Here’s the list of thoughts they offered on the benefits of using soap nuts:

• There is no packaging to recycle.
• Reduced cost because you only need one product to clean, soften, and sanitize your laundry.
• Environmentally friendly because no chemicals are going out the drain into the sewage system or water table.
• Laundry has a fresh scent after washing without having to add anything.
• Clothes and towels looking new longer because there are no harsh chemicals to break down the fabric fibers or colors.
• No added scent to irritate sensitive noses or skin, especially great for babies.
• Soap nuts are hypo-allergenic so they won’t bother people with allergies or skin irritations.
• No energy is used in the harvesting or manufacturing so there is little negative environmental impact from soap nuts

I have read on some sites that one may want to add an oxygen bleach to whiten whites, but I have not found that I need to do that. My partner is an “old-fashioned” sort who still carries and uses white cotton handkerchiefs. Since we live in the south he often wears white so he has many pairs of white underwear. All the whites I’ve washed with soap nuts exclusively have come out as white or whiter than they did when I used regular laundry soap and bleach. Big difference though for me was the stench of bleach in the house and the amount of spray starch I needed to use on the handkerchiefs when I iron them. Much less starch is necessary because the handkerchiefs are soft to start and almost wrinkle free right out the dryer.

I showed our dinner guests the Lullwater Soapnuts packaging, which is a muslin bag with the instructions printed on the bag itself. Inside is a thin plastic bag to keep the soap nuts fresher longer and to keep the saponin from drying out in shipping and also in storage. Everyone was also really impressed with the minimal packaging.

Another company I got a sample from sent a printed color tri-fold brochure which kind of bothered me because one of the reasons I switched to using soapnut berries was to cut down on recycling and on waste. If they’d at least printed their brochure on recycled paper with single color ink I would have been less displeased.

Lullwater has the best retail price I have found so far.

I did get a great deal on bulk soap nuts from a company in Canada that I found on Ebay. I am waiting on those to arrive so I can tell you how they compare in freshness to the Lullwater Soapnuts. I will also give you a  packaging comparison on those.

I made up another batch of soapnut tea on Friday in preparation for the tons of dishes, silverware, and stemware I have to wash after one of these dinner parties. I haven’t calculated cost on using soapnuts in the dishwasher yet, but one thing I did notice is that even my old dishes which have begun to look dull from the surface scratches look brighter and less worn. My flatware looks brighter, and so do my stainless steel sinks because I use soapnut liquid to wash the glasses and fragile pieces I don’t want to put in the dishwasher.  Of course those scratches on my older dishes are also places for bacteria to grow so using the soapnuts with vinegar in the rinse agent cup puts my mind at ease that my dishes are sanitized without using harsh chemicals.

Once my shipment from the Canadien company arrives I’ll be doing more experiments with homemade chemical free cleaners using soap nuts liquid as a base.

My family is coming to visit at the end of July to celebrate my sister’s 50th birthday and I can’t wait to share the soap nuts with them. I’ve told them both about how great they are, but even though they know how meticulous and critical I can be and trust my judgment this weekend I was convinced that feeling is truly believing even if the soap nuts market research I did was informal.

My next post will be about growing your own soapnut trees and the things to consider before you decide this is a good idea.

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We’ll make this one quick. As part of our campaign to make the entire world aware of soap nuts we’d be interested to know how many people have used them.

We created this simple poll to gather some statistics:

[poll id="2"]

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