I thought today, since I just had an email exchange with someone on the subject of using soap nuts in the dishwasher, I’d share my own experiences and techniques for using soap nuts in the dishwasher and for hand washing of dishes.

I live in an area with very hard water and we cook with olive oil every day so I have some very tough dishwashing conditions. I also don’t always get the dishwasher loaded or the dishes rinsed immediately which doesn’t make things easier.

However, I have used soap nuts in several ways for washing dishes both by hand and in the dishwasher and had mostly good results.

When hand washing with soap nuts I strongly suggest, if your dishes are greasy or have caked on food, that you keep a shaker can of soap nuts powder near the sink. I sprinkle some finely ground soap nuts onto greasy plates or caked/cooked on food to help it to release more easily. The soap nuts powder also helps to not only release the grease from dishes but also gives the grease something to stick to so that it stays off the dish as you rinse. I’ve also mentioned previously that soap nuts powder is the best natural scouring powder I have ever used so there’s almost no scrubbing if you sprinkle soap nuts powder on a damp plate or pot even if the mess is stuck on thick.

Recently I also took some NaturOli Extreme 18X diluted it 5 to 1 with water and put it in a spray bottle. I spray the dishes now, give it a second to work it’s surfactant magic and then swipe the sponge across the dish or pot and load it into the dishwasher.

Since I also often wash dishes by hand to save the electric and water. I add either 1 teaspoon of undiluted Extreme 18x or homemade soap nuts liquid. Then fill the sink with warm water and set the dishes in it to soak for about 2 minutes. I then scrub them with the sponge and dip them in the rinse sink which I have filled with water water and 1/4 cup of white vinegar.

Some people put the soap nuts into the silverware cup and I have tried this with fairly poor results so I do not suggest this as a perfect solution.

One of the reasons that soap nuts do work on dishes so well is their ability to change the surface tension of both the water and the food or grease. However because of the nature of dishwashers you get more of a splashing of water than you get a submerging and agitation like you would in the washing machine with your laundry. That’s one the reasons I strongly suggest you either pre-soak them in the sink in warm water with soap nuts liquid as described above or your pre-scrub them using soap nuts powder.

Truth is most of the time I just use the soap nuts liquid and powder to hand wash my dishes instead of using the dishwasher. It saves me money by reducing my energy and it saves water since I can take the used water from the sinks when I’m done and use it on my plants.

If you are determined to try soap nuts in the dishwasher just be sure to rinse the dishes as well as possible and if they are greasy use some soap nuts powder on them to break up the grease and rinse most of it off the dishes before loading them in the dishwasher.

Soap nuts are an amazing way to reduce toxic chemicals and packaged cleaners from your home and reduce recycling waste and save money. But to make the most of them you must understand how they work and work with them the way nature intended.

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.

Two of the many great benefits of soap nuts are their anti-fungal and antibacterial properties. The fact that soap nuts are free of synthetic and petro-chemicals just makes them all the better for cleaning anything that comes in contact with your skin.

I don’t often wear makeup, but even so my makeup brushes need cleaning from time to time because bacteria and oil builds up in them making them not only clumpy but also more likely to cause my skin to breakout.

A few weeks ago it struck me that a perfect way to kill any bacteria that might be living on my makeup brushes was to soak them in the sink with some soap nuts liquid. Since the saponins in soap nuts are natural surfactants and change the water tension allowing water to penetrate more deeply into fabrics and cause them to realease dirt and oil, it made sense to me that the same would be true for releasing oil, makeup, facial oil, and dirt from my makeup brushes.

Soap nuts are so mild and have no harsh chemical to break down the hairs in my natural makeup brushes so I don’t have to worry about my brushes beginning to get stiff and reduce the fluidity of the bristles when I apply powder or blush. They also don’t leave any residue so that is another bonus especially for people with sensitive skin who are prone to rashes from synthetic chemicals or fragrances.

I half filled my bathroom sink with warm water and a 1/2 teaspoon of soap nuts liquid and held the bristles in the water for a minute or so and then swished them around. Then I took my hand and worked the warm water and soap nuts liquid through the brush being sure it flowed through the bristles all the way up to the handle. I leaned the handle against the edge of the sink and let the brush part soak in the soap nuts for about five minutes, then drained the sink and rinsed the brush with cool water, and laid the brushes out to dry on the edge of the sink. Wow, I was amazed at how much makeup and residue was in those brushes. Last thing I did was squeeze the moisture out of them and flick them a couple of times to get the last of the water out and then let them dry.

I had perfectly soft clean makeup brushes, no chemical residue and all without chemicals or solvents thanks to soap nuts.

The same is true for hair brushes and combs, just put warm water and a 1/2 tsp or so of soap nuts liquid in your sink and let them soak, then swish them around and be sure to pull any hair and lint out of the teeth and bristles.

People who use products like gel, mousse, or leave-in conditioner know that over time the residue ends up on their hair brushes and combs. Then you get these globs of hair stuck on the bristles glued to your hair brush by the natural oils from the scalp and the hair care product residue.

Even though warm weather is upon us and hair care and styling product usage changes with the weather, oil and perspiration coating your hair brush is an invitation for bacterial growth. Soap nuts will not only clean your hair brushes without damaging them, but also make it less likely that you’ll end up with scalp irritations or dandruff because of course soap nuts are both anti-fungal and anti microbial.

Of course now that I have written this post I have to get back to the subject of soap nuts shampoo and using soap nuts for general personal care and skin care. So come back in a few days to read my post on that.

With the beautiful weather months at hand more and more people are out digging in the dirt planting for beautification or planting vegetable gardens. With all of that outdoor work comes the need to deal with dirty hands, dirty clothes, lots of perspiration odor in your clothes, grimy faces, and more than a few preditory insects trying to have a snack at your expense.

Soap nuts in their various common use forms answer every one of those challenges, and do so chemically free and without exposing your body or clothes to harmful irritating detergents or cleansers.

Before heading out to the garden mist yourself with some soap nuts liquid as a green chemical free insect repellent. The saponin is a natural insect repellent but will not harm you or your skin like many of the traditional insect or mosquito repellents.

After using soap nuts powder as a chemical free hand scrub for my mobile mechanics it seemed sensible that if soap nuts worked that well on oily greasy hands they’d work equally well on dirt on the hands and under the finger nails after gardening. So a few weeks ago after clearing an area for a ginger garden I had filthy gardener’s hands. Okay some people wear gloves but I’m am very hands on in everything I do and gardening is no exception. My nails are fairly short but even so I had plenty of sandy black grit under them and anyone who has ever gardened with their bare hands knows getting the dirt out from under your nails is a challenge and requires serious scrubbing.

I was amazed at how great my nails looked after a short scrub with soap nuts powder. I was equally pleased that scrubbing my hands with soap nuts did not dry them out.

Once I finished the gardening for that day my next challenge was the dirt that was all over me and my clothes, not to mention the eau de armpit I’d acquired from working in the afternoon sun.

I dropped the clothes into the laundry and popped my soap nuts in their wash bag into the washer and headed for the bath tub for a soak and a some serious scrubbing (or so I thought).

A few months ago I started sprinkling soap nuts powder into my bath water and the tub filled knowing that there would be a lot less scrubbing required because the same way soap nuts change the water tension in the washing machine they do the same in water used for any kind of washing.

Once the tub was filled I slid in, and took a spoon of the soap nuts powder I keep on the side of the tub for and started on my feet. I should mention at this point I also usually garden bare foot so there was serious dirt caked on my feet after watering in the new garden. I make it a habit to scrub my toe nails with soap nuts powder at least once a week to deter fungal growth and keep my nails white naturally. I have some scientific documentation on how well the saponin from soap nuts works as an antifungal treatment so if you need a good anti-fungal detergent try soap nuts. I’ll share that data in one of my next posts.

Back to soap nuts and gardening.

I sprinkled a bit of soap nuts powder onto my damp skin and lathered it up all the way from toes to top and then took the bottle of soap nuts liquid I keep on the side of the tub and washed my hair with it. Yes soap nuts shampoo too. Hey if I’m going to keep my house and body free of chemicals then my hair deserves the same treatment.

Keep in mind I have very coarse full hair below my waste so there is a lot of it to wash. I have had to learn to adjust to using soap nuts shampoo because since there is not real lather guaging how much can be challenging. Once in awhile I get brave and use the soap nuts powder mixed with some vegetable glycerin for shampooing also. I have found that you really need to have your hair very wet to shampoo with soap nuts and you need to use as little as possible and rinse really well. I always squirt a dab of vegetable glycerin into my damp hands after I shampoo with soap nuts because my hair tends to be coarse and when I do that the comb glides through my hair with no resistance. I can’t even say that was true when I used to use regular sulfate sudsy shampoo and hair conditioner. I’ll dedicate an entire post to soap nuts shampoo in the coming weeks because I know many people want to try it but don’t know where to start of who to use soap nuts for a shampoo.

On a side note since I started washing my hair with soap nuts shampoo I have notice a great deal less breakage and my hair seems to be growing faster. I suspect this is due in part to how healthy my scalp is because of using soap nuts.

But back to soap nuts being a dream come true for a gardener.

The last item that needed scrubbing was my face (and then of course the bath tub). I sprinkle a little soap nuts powder (finely ground) onto my hands work up a nice lather and clean and exfoliate my face all in one action.

The bath tub took a sprinkling of soap nuts powder on the grimy bath tub ring and some swooshing with my bare hand and my bath tub was spotless again.

Now think about this if I had used one product for each of the things I described above I would have purchased at least 7 products to do what I did with soap nuts; one item which I get packaged in muslin bags from NaturOli.

Seven products packaged in plastic:
Laundry detergent
Hand soap
Body Wash
Shampoo (and Conditioner)
Face Wash
Face Scrub (for exfoliating)
Bath Tub cleanser or soft scrub (read my post on soap nuts as a scouring powder)

Not only did I get my body, hair, hands and feet, face, clothes, and bath tub clean I did so with no negative impact on my person or the environment.

Oh and after I make soap nuts liquid (soap nuts tea) I take the spent soap berries and sprinkle them around in my flower beds to deter insects, especially ants. They break down over time right into the soil and while they are breaking down the soap nuts act as a natural insectide and insect repellent but with no harm to either my plants or the ground water.

Wahooo … now who could not like soap nuts. Whether you are looking for ways to cut household expenses, have sensitivity to chemicals or fragrances, or want to reduce the waste you produce soap nuts offers a solution. Oh and they are so much less expensive to use than all those packaged chemical cleaners and personal care products.

I can make a 3 liter bottle of soap nuts liquid at home for approximately $2.23 cents using 1 1/2 ounces of soap nuts. That’s if you buy the NaturOli soap nuts in a one pound bag. I buy the 4 pound bag of NaturOli Nuts Soap Nuts so in point of fact my cost for the 3 liter bottle of soap nuts liquid is actually $1.35. Since I harness solar power to make my soap nuts liquid I have zero energy cost for it too.
Read the post on making soap nuts liquid greener http://www.soap-nuts.info/2009/04/01/making-soap-nuts-liquid-greener

I use that 3 liter bottle for laundry, counter tops, insect repellent, dishwasher detergent, dishwashing liquid, liquid hand soap, for mopping the floors, washing the cars, and shampoo.

Costing out the soap nuts powder is a bit different since I do both a fine grind and a coarse grind depending on what I am using it for. If I use the fine grind to wash my face or as a hand or foot scrub I use about 1/8 of a tsp yes only that tiny bit does the job.

The coarsely ground soap nuts powder I use for scouring sinks, bath tubs, toilets I use about 1 tsp for each sink, bath tub, and toilet.

In my next post I’ll give you the numbers on how much using soap nuts powder for personal care and as a chemical free scouring powder costs.

The next time you head out for time in the garden be sure you have your soap nuts ready!

A few weeks ago I had mobile mechanics at my house to do some maintenance on one of the cars. When the mechanics finished they needed to scrub the grime and engine grease from their hands. Since I knew how great soap nuts powder was for scrubbing the grime out of my toilets, bath tubs, and sinks I invited them into the house to wash up. I figured worse case I’d just scrub the bathroom sink with soap nuts powder when they were done. However, they quickly realized their industrial size container of Goop was empty.

Never one to be afraid to experiment I offered a sprinkling of soap nuts powder as an alternative. Wow, what great results from a tiny sprinkling on their very greasy hands.

One of the greatest things is that not only were they happy and impressed but I got a chance to explain what soap nuts were to them as they stood there scrubbing their hands in amazement at how well this stuff worked and how gentle it was on their skin.

Once they were both done I sprinkled a bit more soap nuts powder into the damp sink and swooshed it around with my hands and had a sparkling sink once again.

Anyone who has done any work on cars or any kind of fuel burning engine knows how hard it can be to get the grease and carbon off your hands. So many of the hand cleaners have pumice as the scouring agent and although it is a natural substance it is not soluble (it is a ground lava) so you end up with a bunch of it clogging up your sink drains along with all that grease and the various toxic fluids like antifreeze you may come in contact with. Additionally if you have the misfortune to scrape some skin or your knuckles while working on the engine those pumice based hand scrubs burn like crazy. After all they have solvents in them to dissolve the oily fluids. Skin irritating and often dangerous solvents are the last thing you want to put on roughed up skin.

Because soap nuts powder has that great natural surfactant (saponin) in it, the grime is released from the skin instead of dissolved and soap nuts (especially in powder form) is a natural exfoliant that does the scrubbing part. Whatever powder isn’t dissolved is biodegradable and also helps to remediate the chemicals in the grey water as it goes down the drain and into the waste water system.

Now in my next post I’ll share with you how I’ve used soap nuts powder as a natural hand scrub after doing some very “hands on” gardening as well as some other really great things I’ve done with the powder related to personal hygeine, skin care, and even garden pest control.

Every time I try one of these little experiments I am impressed with not only how well and safely soap nuts clean but how easy it is to use them and to replace chemicals while saving money and the environment. The benefits and uses of soap nuts truly are limitless, and when you use soap nuts in place of chemicals you help the environment and you save money.

More on soap nuts powders many uses coming your way soon.

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.

The lastest is a handmade soap nuts soap bar. Now how cool a thing is that?

I have already ordered a few for myself, because I know how amazing soap nuts are in regular form, as soap nuts liquid, soap nuts powder, and of course the new soap nuts liquid laundry soap Extreme 18X from Naturoli. I’m sure I will love this soap nuts soap bar just as much.

What NaturOli has done is incorporate their proprietary soap nuts liquid concentrate and finely ground soap nuts powder into a natural hand made soap bar.

Now of course a company that started with all things olive as the foundation for their natural skin care has to combine their roots with their newest mission of telling the world about the benefits of soap nuts.

As they say on their site “This limited edition, handmade, cold-pressed bar is for those who wish to explore both the wonderful worlds of soap nuts and olive oil soaps in one very unique blend. Pure Sapindus Mukorossi soap nuts powder allows for mild exfoliation. Enhanced with rich, healthy oils and natural ingredients to cleanse and nourish your skin.”

Their soap nut soap bar is both rich in antioxidants and anti-bacterial. There are no synthetic fragrances or dyes. They’ve added rich natural oils for the skin, and rosemary oil for enhanced natural anti-bacterial protection.

Pretty cool looking too, don’t you think? Those little flecks you see are the soap nuts powder.

Go get some handmade natural soap nuts soap bars for yourself, these are limited edition and I expect they will go fast.

If you want to try a sample of several different soap nuts products from NaturOli, be sure to check out their new soap nuts special trial size package which includes all of these different soap nuts products:

• Traditional usage raw soap nuts sampler
• a state-of the-art Soap Nuts liquid laundry soap concentrate trial bottle,

plus

• A new, luxurious, limited-edition Soap Nuts and Olive Natural Soap Bar.
  
  

One of the things most people who boil soap nuts liquid at home often wonder about is the shelf life.

Anyone who has experience with water based botanicals knows that fermentation and bacterial growth can occur. However, there are ways to extend the shelf-life of your homemade soap nuts liquid.

• Increase the concentration – use more soap nuts and less water or boil soap nuts powder to extract the maximum amount of saponin from the soap nuts
• Strain your soap nuts liquid through a super fine strainer so you have almost no sediment
• Refrigerate your soap nuts liquid as soon as it is cool.
• Freeze the liquid in old ice cube trays – measure the amount of liquid first so you know how much you are using when you drop the cubes into the washer (or you can thaw them prior to using them)
• Can the soap nuts liquid like you would homemade preserves.
• Add sea salt to the liquid. It will help with fermentation (bread bakers know this trick) it will also help to whiten your whites when you use the liquid. It works by absorbing moisture from the cells of bacteria and mold through osmosis, which kills them or leaves them unable to reproduce.
• Use a vacuum sealing system for packaging soap nuts liquid.

Another alternative if you simply don’t have time to make soap nuts lqiuid frequently or are concerned about the shelf-life of your homemade liquid is to purchase Extreme 18X NaturOli’s new soap nuts liquid laundry concentrate.

NaturOli has already taken the guess work out of soap nuts liquid shelf-life. Their new Extreme 18X soap nuts liquid concentrate has a two year shelf-life. Even though it is packaged as a liquid laundry detergent concentrate you can use it in all the ways you’d use homemade soap nuts liquid, by diluting as needed.

I used it in my carpet cleaner and mopped my laminate floors with it. I put 1 tsp in carpet cleaner, and 1/2 tsp in the mop bucket with warm water and was very pleased with the results from both experiments.

Soap Nuts Liquid Laundry Soap Concentrate

This new soap nuts product is simply amazing and so perfectly named Extreme 18X. Extreme soap nuts is exactly what it is, but I would expect nothing less from a company like NaturOli. They are after all a company that gets the entire value of soap nuts and makes sure that everything they formulate is as green as possible. True of Extreme 18X in a way unimagined by other sellers of soap nuts liquid laundry soaps.

What’s so special about Extreme 18X soap nuts liquid laundry soap concentrate?

Well, first and foremost it is the most concentrated liquid laundry soap on the market. That’s true of even when compared with the regular packaged liquid detergent concentrates from those big chemical companies.

The next thing that is so amazing about it is that NaturOli has created a product that has the tiniest carbon footprint they can manage. It’s formulated right here in the United States and packaged here as well, so no shipping from overseas. They’re packaging it in 8 oz PETE (recyclable) bottles to start and that little easy to handle 8 oz bottle will do at least 96 HE loads or 48 standard loads of laundry. Amazing is an understatement.

Although the instructions on the bottle recommend 1/2 tsp for a standard HE load and 1 tsp for a standard machine load you actually can use half that amount. Now the brain is a tricky thing so imagining that such a tiny amount will work is hard to wrap your brain around, especially after all the years of programming with those monsterous bottles of regular liquid detergent and their giant caps with the measure marks inside.

Truth is even I had a hard time believing so little could work that well, but I got to test it before it hit the market and I swear I used 1/2 tsp in my standard top-loading machine and got perfect clean, soft, unscented laundry. Of course everyone has different laundry needs, which is why the folks at NaturOli recommend you try half the suggested amount first and then up it if you feel you need to for your own washing needs. Now what company would encourage you to use less, exept a company that really wants you to get the most from every dollar you spend.

NaturOli is also ALL about 100 percent full disclosure on their labels so they list every single ingredient in their new soap nuts liquid concentrate.

Here are the ingredients:

– Pure Saponin Aqueous Extract from 100% Sapindus Mukorossi Soap Nuts
– Vegetable Glycerin
– Olive Leaf Extract (olea europea leaf extract)
– Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Benzoate

That’s it folks! They purposely don’t add essential oils (even though some other companies do) because they know that oils of any kind can cause problems with clogging up the fibers on things like cloth diapers. They found a better way to stabilize and “preserve” their soap nuts liquid laundry soap which gives it about a two year shelf life. These people put so much thought into their products and it shows in the response and the brand loyalty.

They also want to be sure that everyone who considers purchasing their new soap nuts liquid concentrate knows everything that is NOT in it. So they cover that on the label too.

What’s NOT in Extreme 18X:

• Dye and fragrance free
• SLS, NPE and phosphate free
• Formaldehyde free
• Petro-chemical free
• Chlorine free 
•Unscented – no essential oils added

Extreme 18X utilizes a safe, proprietary, water-based soap nut saponin extraction process. No chemical solvents used. Made in the USA, so you can feel safe about how well the formulation and packaging is supervised, not to mention keeping jobs in our country, while helping emerging nations by purchasing the soap nuts from which the saponin is extracted. Definitely a win for everyone.

Here are some other great things to know about Extreme 18X:

• Green eco-friendly proprietary formulation
• Hypoallergenic
• Biodegradable
• Antifungal
• Anti-microbial
• Enhanced with pure Olive Leaf Extract for additional protective properties (among the oldest known therapies for skin ailments)
• Odor removing
• Preserves integrity of fabric fibers - excellent for fine, delicate fabrics and wools
• Preserves fabric colors
• PH neutral (6)
• Vegan
• No animal testing
• Absolute minimum carbon footprint
• Minimizes shipping costs
• Lightweight and easy to handle bottle
• Free toggle cap provided for ease of pouring
• No optical brighteners or scents – excellent for military use and all scenarios where scents are to be avoided
• Recyclable PETE bottling
• Produced and bottled in the USA

So if you’ve found every excuse not to switch to a green laundry soap (detergent) because it’s too complicated, it doesn’t work, it’s confusing or anything else you may have come up with; you no longer have an excuse.

Extreme 18X - Soap Nuts Liquid Laundry Soap Concentrate

Soap nuts liquid recipe:

Place 12 to 15 soap nuts (about 1.5 ounces) in about 6 cups of water. For best results, bring to a boil and simmer for approximately an hour. You will know that you have fully extracted from the soap nuts when they turn very light tan or gray and are mushy. Allow to cool and strain. Store the soap nuts liquid concentrate in an airtight glass jar. Like all botanicals, the infused soap nut liquid is best stored in a cool place away from direct sunlight. This 100% pure soap nut liquid solution has absolutely no preservatives of any kind; hence it has a limited shelf life of a few days, unless stabilized. Refrigeration will extend its shelf life. This is typical of virtually all water-based botanical solutions.

The following is only a very short list of some homemade green cleaning products using soap nuts liquid.

Green Multi-purpose Household Cleaner
Pour soap nuts liquid into a spray bottle. Use full strength or dilute as desired. Use for sinks, counters, floors, and to wash your dishes by hand.

Chemical Free Window and Glass Cleaner:
Fill a spray bottle with about 8 oz of water. Add a half-ounce of soap nuts liquid and a half-ounce of vinegar. Spray and then wipe clean with dry cloth.

Chemical Free Dishwashing Detergent:
Fill the dishwasher soap dispenser with soap nuts liquid. Wash as usual. Tip: For extra sparkle, add a half-ounce of vinegar to the rinse dispenser or during the rinse cycle.

Chemical Free Carpet Cleaning Liquid:
Soap nuts liquid works exceptionally well in carpet cleaners because it is so low sudsing and odor reducing. Add about a quarter cup of soap nuts liquid to hot water in the portable cleaner. Great for urine stains.

Chemical Free Jewelry Cleaner:
Soak jewelry in soap nuts liquid for a few minutes. Use an old soft toothbrush to remove debris. Rinse with clean water and polish with a soft cloth. Soap nuts have been used as a fantastic jewelry cleaner for centuries.

Chemical Free Pet Shampoo:
Soap nuts also have a natural insect repellent property so not only will your pets be naturally cleaned they’ll be less likely to attract various pests such as fleas, ticks, and lice. The natural antifungal properties of soap nuts are perfect for pets with skin irritations, rashes, and hot spots. Soap nuts liquid is also perfect for washing pet bedding.

Chemical Free Shampoo:
Use soap nuts liquid to shampoo hair. Leave in for about 5 minutes.
Rinse as usual with luke warm water, or diluted vinegar. If you prefer more suds, add a little your favorite shampoo.

Next post all the wonderful ways to use soap nuts powder for green cleaning and chemical free scrubbing.

Here’s a story of one, my sister, who decided to make use of the natural chemical free insect repellent properties of soap nuts.

I heard this story a few months ago when the weather in Oklahoma was still warm and insects assaulting gardens and people was common place.

After discussing all of the wonderful ways to use soap nuts with my sister over the course of several months, Leslie decided to put them to the test as a chemical free insect repellent for people and vegetation.

If you’ve ever spent any time in a warm climate you know that mosquitoes can be the bain of a nature lover. Especially if you have neighbors who leave water standing in pots and buckets in their yard. Mosquitoes just love to make a happy home in standing water.

My sister has a half acre lot in Oklahoma. Their house sits on 1/4 of the acre and she and her husband leave the other 1/4 acre wild to enjoy what nature offers. Because of that, mosquitoes are happy to cohabit with them. Les is not so happy about it, nor are her dogs, but we believe in living in harmony with nature when possible.

Every morning part of Leslie’s ritual is to go out her back door and walk around to breath in a bit of fresh air and commune with nature. Since it’s so very warm in Oklahoma in the summer and fall, she is often in short sleeve shirts and short pants. That offers a mosquito, or several hundred of them, plenty of tasty flesh. So her outdoor strolls in the morning are often cut short by an air assault.

One day she decided to just give that soap nuts liquid she used on her counter tops a try and see if it really did repel insects. So she went outside and stood still for a few minutes. That few minutes brought about 20 mosquitoes in for a landing on her arms and legs. She chased them off, went into the kitchen and got her always handy bottle of soap nuts liquid and sprayed herself lightly with it. She topped off her cup of tea and went back outside and stood in the same spot where the mosquitoes were often seen and felt.

After more than five minutes of just standing admiring the surroundings only one mosquito came in for a landing on her thigh. That landing lasted all of 5 seconds and off it flew without even a nibble. Not another of those annoying creatures wanted anything to do with her soap nuts protected flesh. It seems that hopping, crawling, and flying insects simply loathe the smell of soap nuts, specifically the saponin, and are naturally repelled.

In another post I’ll share the true story of how soap nuts saved a basil plant from being annihilated by a grasshopper, but if you are an outdoor lover consider protecting yourself, your family, and your pets with a light coating of soap nuts liquid to repel the insects. Chemical free insect repellent, fast, easy, and affordable. No need to expose the ones you love to insect bites or chemicals!

Oh you can also use soap nuts liquid as a chemical free pet shampoo for fleas and lice, but again I’ll share more of that in another post.

I’ve been perfectly happy with how white my white clothes are using only soap nuts with no whitening additive. We live in Central Florida which means that we have lots of white clothing and under garments. In addition if you’ve read any of my other posts you also know that my mate uses white cotton handkerchiefs. He has no complaints about our white clothes either.

However, after doing some research on chemical free stain removers I read that if one soaks the stained garment in salt water overnight that stains, even tough ones, come out more easily. Through a bit of inductive reasoning I started to think that maybe adding salt to my laundry along with the soap nuts might be a bit of a help for both tough stains and whites without bleach in the laundry.

Many people who live in areas with hard water have water softeners installed which use either rock salt or salt pellets. These water softeners are very common in Central Florida.

Yesterday I decided to give it a go and tried adding sea salt to my laundry to see if it made any difference in either stain release or whitening of my whites. In truth the only issues I really had were some synthetic handkechiefs that had a bit of a dingie appearance.

Well I am happy to report that ALL of my whites were even whiter by simply adding course ground sea salt to the water. I used between 1 tablespoon and 1/4 of a cup depending on load size. All of my clothes came out as soft as with soap nuts alone, but those dingie handkerchiefs and some grubby socks were white as could be with the addition of some salt. No need for bleach to whiten anything. I waited for the washer to fill and then sprinkled the salt around the wash tub to allow the salt to dissolve rather than clump up on the clothes. This technique should work well no matter whether you use soap nuts in the wash bag, soap nuts liquid, or soap nuts powder as your green laundry detergent.

I should also add that I did the laundry in cold water, and since it was pretty darn cold here the water was VERY cold. So don’t think you’ll need to use warm water to make this work. I didn’t.

Also for those of you who have hard water and don’t have a home water softener try the salt trick to soften the water and enhance the natural cleaning of soap nuts for all of your laundry.

If you are like me and refuse to use packaged stain removers or bleach (even eco-friendly bleach) then try adding some salt to the laundry.

I’m also thinking that I will mix some soap nuts powder and sea salt together and see if it makes cleaning the toilets, bathtubs, showers, and sinks easier.

My next few posts will be about other eco-friendly ways to remove stains if you use soap nuts.

Be sure to stay up to date with my posts because very soon we’ll be sharing some amazing news from NaturOli about a new soap nuts product they are about to launch.

If you have heard about soap nuts but still haven’t tried them, get a Soap Nuts sampler  and experience the benefits of this all natural laundry detergent.

You’ll see soap nuts powder offered on some websites for sale. Folks, please just grind the soap nuts yourself from your bits and pieces and use a container you already have to reuse and renew and make soap nuts even more green.

Now if you are going to grind soap nuts powder for use as a chemical free laundry detergent then you will want to grind it to a very fine powder, something close to a dust because you want the powder particles to dissolve as they release the saponins and go out of the washer and down the drain, not stick to your clothes.

However, if you plan to use soap nuts powder as a chemical free scouring powder or cleanser, like for scrubbing sinks, pots and pans, and the toilet bowl, then you will want a more coarse grind.

I share this tip because I have tried it both ways and find the more coarse powder gives not only more scrubbing power because of the size of the particles, but it also gives you more “suds” so you can gauge the amount needed more easily.

By the way, I have been scrubbing my toilet bowls with soap nuts powder for a couple of weeks now, and the black ring has barely returned and now a quick swish of some powder on the dry edge of the toilet bowl and the toilet brush dampened in the water is all it takes for a quick touch up.

NO MORE SCRUBBING TOILETS!

Boy do I love that. But as any of you who have read more than one of my posts knows I just generally love soap nuts and can’t say enough about how much I enjoy cleaning my house and doing laundry now that I have this wonderful green and truly natural cleaning alternative.

We “live” in our home. In other words, we lie on the couch watching television and often nap on the couch or have overnight guests who sleep there. We’ve also been known to eat dinner or snack in front of the television which means more than a slight chance of food or drink spilled onto the upholstery.

Besides all of that abuse there’s more than a small bit of cigarette and cigar smoking that goes on in our home, especially when we have dinner quests. Over time all of that abuse can take its toll on the upholstery especially in the form of odors and stains from perspiration and smoke.

A few months ago my mate and I both noticed how much wear the couch (and love seat) were showing. There were obvious stains and a lingering stale odor. The living room furniture is over 6 years old and suffered through being closed up in our home in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina then loaded into a moving truck and put into storage for a few days. So as you can guess the upholstery needed a good cleaning.

Like your sheets your skin is in contact with the furniture upholstery. We don’t want chemicals in our bed, on our clothes and skin, nor do we want them on the couch and love seat. It’s all part of our chemical free cleaning approach.

I had washed the pillows from the couch and love seat in the washer using soap nuts many times and am always thrilled at how soft and fresh they come out. But the cushions posed a problem because they are too big to put into the washer so I got brave right before the holidays and peeled the covers off them and tossed them into the washer with soap nuts. It’s icky, but the once soft fabric actually felt stiff from all the dirt and perspiration that had built up on the cushions over the years.

I let them soak in the cold water with the soap nuts for about fifteen minutes and swirled it all around with my hand a couple of times to be sure the water tension had broken and the stains were being presoaked. You really don’t realize how much dirt has built up in something over the years, until you see clear water turn brown from the dirt imbedded in the fabric

I then ran the washer as usual using cold water wash and rinse, and when I pulled the cushion covers out of the washer I was dumbstruck by how much lighter in color the tan areas were and how much brighter the black parts were. The fabric has big squares of black and tan with areas that are kind of tweed. The results of cleaning the upholstery with soap nuts was overhwhelming, and that was before they got dry.

Once dried, I took them out and replaced them onto the foam inserts and I could not believe how soft they were to the touch.

I am sure you could use soap nuts liquid in a carpet cleaner with an upholstery attachment, but since our foam cushions are so think I opted to remove the covers and wash them in the washing machine like regular laundry.

Soap nuts once again a perfect chemical free solution to an everyday cleaning task, and one less product I need to buy or package to recycle.

Soap nuts – chemical free upholstery cleaning made easy!

Polishing my silver flatware has always been an odious task for me. Probably going back to childhood when I was forced to clean the silver for my paternal grandmother as a regular task when I visited them. Cleaning silver was never easy, but with soap nuts it is a breeze.

I’d read that soap nuts have been used for centuries as a chemical free jewelry cleaner, which I hadn’t tried, but for some reason I never thought about polishing my silverware with soap nuts before this.

After a dinner party on December 24th, for my mate’s birthday, I had tons of dishes and silverware to wash. I was dreading it, especially since I recently decided to abandon the dishwasher and do my dishes by hand. So when it came time to clean that huge pile of silverware I thought I’d be at it for days instead of hours.

Much to my own surprise cleaning the tarnish off the silver flatware  with soap nuts liquid was so easy I am thinking of using the silver more often. I use soap nuts liquid for cleaning many things, and since I started handwashing dishes I use it as my dish liquid. All it took to clean the silverware, even the stuff with food caked to it in a crust was a few squirts of soap nuts liquid on a sponge and a tiny bit of rubbing with the abrasive side of the sponge. Wow chemical free silverware polish, what a joy!

With very little effort I have sparkling clean and very shiny silver flatware. Now here’s really great part of this is that the silver is my mother’s wedding silver. Actually I have two sets, one is Mom’s and one belonged to my father’s parents. Over the years it has been neglected and often cleaned in a way that has scratched the surface causing even more tarnish to build up. I thought we were destined to have tarnish on this beautiful silverware forever because of the damage already done to it.

You’ve probably read somewhere that toothpaste is a good homemade way to clean silver. I warn you against it though because toothpaste, by its nature, is abrasive and it will cause fine scratches in your silver that will actually encourage more tarnish over time. If you want a homemade silver cleaner, then try soap nuts liquid.

I really should do some before and after pictures on this one because the results astounded me. Cleaning with soap nuts has made my life so much easier and healthier but to have more soap nuts uses makes me even happier.

Once again soap nuts exceeded my expectations, made a nasty cleaning experience into a happy one. I am thrilled that I did it all chemical free with no harm to me or the environment and without having to buy a special product just to do this one occasional task.

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.

However, I ground some soap nuts powder after receiving a sticky batch of soap nuts from a seller on Ebay. I didn’t want them to go to waste so I made soap nuts powder and some soap nuts liquid.

I put the soap nuts powder in my bath tub sometimes, and I use it as an exfoliating scrub on feet and hands.

A few days ago I was looking at a greasy bath tub ring caused by a gift of bath oil and just could not bring myself to use a chemical cleaning product on the tub, I soak in the bath tub for hours and the last thing I want is toxic chemicals being absorbed by my skin or to inhale the fumes from the residue.
It struck me that since soap nuts are a great multi-purpose chemical free cleaner for my house and my laundry, maybe I could use the soap nuts powder sitting on the side of my tub as a scouring powder (cleanser). I really had nothing to lose except the ingredients for the test.

I scooped a bit of soap nuts powder onto a moist sponge and began to scrub. As it turned out all I really had to do is wipe in a circular motion without any real scouring. Of course, soap nuts have never failed or disappointed me, and that day was no exception.

Sure enough soap nuts powder was a perfect solution to scouring the oily residue off my bath tub. No scratches, enough foaming to let me know the saponin was being released and the outcome was a sparkling clean, chemical free, residue free bathtub. Wow!

Filled with excitement I thought hey why not try in on that nasty black ring at the top edge of the toilet bowls. Now this took a bit of elbow grease since the ring has been a battle for months.

I scrubbed under the rim and saw the ring begin to disappear. Well, as I scrubbed I realized from the smell that it was actually fungus, mildew in fact like you get in the corners of the shower. The constant moisture in the toilet bowl ring feeds the mildew colony.

Since soap nuts are a natural antifungal it worked like a charm. It had been building (and growing) for quite some time so I did need to employ an additional technique I learned on a natural non-toxic cleaning site. This was simple though. I took a cheap pumice stone like you use on callouses and scoured up under the edge of the toilet bowl to get the last imbedded bits of mildew to come loose.

I flushed the toilet and then did one last scrub with the soap nuts powder. Sparkling results without chemicals, what’s not to love?

You will notice, as I have, that the ring has not begun to grow back even after a week since I scrubbed with soap nuts powder. I plan to do this at least once a week to keep the mildew from coming back in the toliets.

So if you have soap nuts powder sitting around, or you want to find another way to use soap nuts and replace yet another chemical cleaning product in the house, try substituting soap nuts powder on all the things you now use cleanser or scouring powder. You will be thrilled I am sure.

Soap nuts create no fumes so unlike most toilet bowl cleaners you won’t have to wear a mask or ventilate the bathroom when you scrub with soap nuts powder. I didn’t even wear gloves, you might want to use gloves.

Another note, sorry to talk dishwashing and toilets in the same post, but since many use steel wool pads or other scrubbing pads, or cleanser for pots and pans, try this same technique on those stuck on messes. The soap nuts will definitely suds in this use, and the powder is non-abrasive so you don’t have to worry about scratching your pots and pans or dishes.

Be sure you buy only the best quality soap nuts powder now available from NaturOli.

Yesterday I started my gift list. Most of you are probably already doing that too.

So why are soap nuts the gift almost everyone I know will appreciate?

Soap nuts can be used for so many uses, from the most traditional use as a natural laundry detergent to the more obscure uses like chemical free car washing. I can’t think of a more thoughtful or useful gift than a natural product with multiple uses that protects the environment and the people who use it from harmful chemicals, while preserving and extending the life of your clothes.

So who can benefit from the gift of soap nuts? Well if you and I were sitting having coffee right now and you asked me that, here’s what I would tell you.

Soap nuts are the perfect gift for:

• College students
• Families
• Single people
• People with sensitive skin
• Treehuggers
• Families expecting a new baby
• Families with an infant or toddler
• People caring for the elderly or infirm
• People in the health care professions
• Auto mechanics
• Hair stylists
• Barbers
• Swimmers
• Gymnasts
• Runners
• Hikers
• Campers
• Hunters
• Fishing enthusiasts
• Asthma and allergy sufferers

And the list goes on, but for the moment let’s talk about athletes and outdoorsy types.

If you have a hunter, fishing enthusiast, swimmer, gymnast, runner, hiker, or camper in your life you know that their laundry needs are challenging.

Let’s start with hunting. Anyone who hunts or knows someone who does is well aware of the lengths they go to in order to be sure their presence is not obvious to the game. They go unwashed sometimes for days to be sure they don’t carry any “unnatural” scents with them into the outdoors. Soap nuts are fragrance free naturally, but besides that the clothing hunters wear is expensive and the camouflage colors help to make them invisible. So when these clothes get washed with traditional laundry detergents there is the chance of fragrance attaching itself to the clothing, not to mention the fading of colors.

More importantly the clothes worn directly against the body are designed to absorb and wick perspiration away from the skin to protect the hunter and retain their body heat. Traditional laudry detergents clog the fabric with residue and reduce the absorption of the material causing it to actually hold the moisture.

If you’ve ever gone hiking in cold weather you know what happens when your feet perspire and the moisture stays in the socks. Ouch! Aching feet that burn, wrinkle and sometimes crack, as well as the possibility of fungal growth in the boots and socks.

Soap nuts are a perfect gift for the hunter in your life for so many reasons. I won’t even get into the benefits they offer to the person who has the joy of washing the clothes when they come home from a hunting trip. Talk about smelly dirty laundry, no let’s not!

Let’s move on to athletes now. As athletic wear has become more technologically advanced and often designed with materials to reduce wind/water resistance to increase speed, athletic clothing fitting properly and hugging the body has become even more important. Lycra or spandex is the key to this body hugging aspect of athletic wear.

So what happens when you wash a swimmer or runner’s clothing in traditional laundry detergents? It breaks down the fabric just like it does with regular clothing. The result, sagging of the fabric. The swim wear and running wear is expensive even for the weekend athlete, so imagine the expense of buying new trunks every few weeks. Don’t forget that most competitive swimmers spend upwards of 4 hours a day in pools with toxic levels of chlorine which will also break down the fabric and fade the colors. If you watched the Olympics you noticed that the swimmers and divers wet themselves before entering the pool. They do that to reduce drag in the water. So if their swimwear repels the water as it does when the fabric is clogged with residue from traditional laundry detergent they lose time. No need to buy special laundry products just for these needs, soap nuts answer all these problems and are completely chemical free!

Go ahead think creatively and give those you love and the planet a gift that shows how much you care about them and the planet

Give environmentally safe, non-toxic, chemical free, natural NaturOli Soap Nuts gift baskets this holiday season, the planet and the recipient will thank you for many years to come.

As a child I was often pressed into service to do laundry and clean the house when visiting my paternal grandmother. This woman was one of those “cleanliness is next to godliness” people. While I have no issues with that mentality my developing immune and respiratory system did have real issues with all the toxic chemicals she used to clean the house.

I never went home from visiting my father’s parents without a rash, a cough, or some kind of skin irritation.

That house was like a museum with plush white carpets and rooms that were barracaded except on the most special of occasions. Despite the house being a museum, rooms no one ever entered had to be scrubbed and polished from ceiling to floor.

An average weekend with her was a chemical manufacturer’s dream event. The crystal chandelier required that each of the 200 plus drop crystals be removed by hand, then soaked and scrubbed in ammonia and hand dried before being replaced. The black and white linoleum floor had to be first stripped, on one’s hands and knees, and then rewaxed with extreme care.

The museum of a living room had a round smoked glass table about 4 feet in diameter with little display areas for her porcelain figures each of which had to be scrubbed with some packaged cleaner, and then the table had to be cleaned with more ammonia based glass cleaner before everything was replaced.

Laundry was a nightmare for this grandchild, partly because my involvement began at about the age of six. She had one of those double tub washers with a ringer from one tub to the other. My grandfather wore white t-shirts and, of course, undershorts which meant the cloud of chlorine bleach that hung in the basement was so dense that I spent the better part of laundry day hacking with my eyes tearing. Scalding water was required to get things clean of course and one had to stick one’s hands down in the agitating tub just to be sure everything got a good dip in the toxic water.

Let’s not even discuss the scalding baths and being scrubbed with Ivory soap which dried my fragile skin out so much I went home with rashes and looking like a scalded lobster after every visit. I still can’t stand the smell of Ivory soap (99% pure what I always ask myself).

So, over the years every time I smelled bleach, ammonia, cleanser or any other cleaning product I would be transported back to standing on a milk carton at six years old ironing handkerchiefs, t-shirts, and even undershorts as the bleach stung my nose and lungs and my hands throbbed from the scalding bleach water they’d been immersed in tens of times each laundry day.

You can imagine that experiencing that kind of discomfort as a child and having allergies to almost everything the day I came into the world, could make a person HATE to clean anything for the rest of their life. Somehow, despite my oh so self-aware approach to life, I never GOT why I hated housework so much.

Then about four months ago I discovered soap nuts. Suddenly I looked forward to cleaning my house and doing my laundry. I looked so forward to it in fact that I started concocting new cleaning products using soap nuts liquid as the base. I even started to soak in the tub with soap nuts liquid and scrub my feet and toenails with soap nuts powder made into a paste to whiten and exfoliate them.

Soap nuts have not only made me love cleaning, they’ve also made my partner a happy soul because our ongoing “discussions” about when I planned to clean the house no longer are a part of our lives.

Clean house, happy cleaner, happy mate, and HAPPY ENVIRONMENT!

If you haven’t tried soap nuts as a natural laundry detergent or chemical free cleaner you simply MUST.

There’s only one place I recommend you buy soap nuts though. NaturOli understands that not only are they selling an environmentally friendly detergent, but that there are people like me who really don’t want to leave behind a wake of toxic chemicals for future generations to deal with. They package everything in recycled, recyclable, or biodegradable packaging.

Many of you have probably read that you can wash your car with soap nuts, which have no chemicals in them or on them. Why would you want to do that? Everything in our world is interconnected and even something as simple as washing the car has an environmental impact.

If you wash your car with a name brand car washing product take a minute to read the label and you’ll see how many chemicals there are in the one you use. As you wash and rinse the car all those chemicals run off onto your driveway, into the street, storm drains (waste water system), and into the grass sometimes.

Those chemicals don’t just disappear with the suds. Now just try to imagine how many people all over the world wash their cars at home. Then multiply that times how many times a year each car gets washed. All of those chemicals end up in lakes, streams, rivers, and oceans. When that water evaporates those chemicals end up in the atmosphere trapped in the water vapor and get rained back down on every living thing on earth.

Then when the car is clean you use more chemicals to slick shine your tires and wheel rims and as you spray the product the chemical vapors get on your skin (over spray) and up your nose into your respiratory system. Toxically cleaned car there’s something to smile about (not).

Now let me tell you how my car turned out. I have a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee. We bought it used and it was not well maintained so to spruce it up we recently had it repainted. This was the first time I had washed it since the paint job and I was thrilled with how it turned out. No water spots, no smearing, dirt and caked on bugs gone. It even did a great job on my wheel rims so I used no chemicals, that’s right zero chemicals to wash my car. I actually think it even helped remove some of the water spots that seem to be a permanent part of the windows and windshield. We then cleaned the windows using the soap nut liquid, vinegar, and water solution we mix up. One thing used for several cleaning purposes and all chemical free!

I poured about 1/3 cup of soap nuts liquid into a bucket added water to about half way full on the bucket. Got loads and loads of suds. I sprayed the car with the hose first to get the surface wet and also to rinse some of the dirt that had splashed up onto the fenders. I took a long handled brush and scrubbed using the soap nuts liquid. Got enough suds to make my mate happy since he still equates suds with clean, and then rinsed that car and towel dried it.

But for me the was the best part. When we hand dried this big Jeep we used only two, yes only two, bath size towels. These are what we call garage towels and only get used for cars, and soaking up spills. Since I do all my laundry using soap nuts my towels are so absorbent that I could dry my entire Jeep with just two towels. When we wash my mates 300 ZX we usually use at least five towels. Can’t wait to wash the Z with soap nuts liquid now. It’s black so if the soap nuts leave any kind of residue we’ll know for sure.

I feel secure the car will sparkle, but I have to test it for the mate’s sake. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I’m also curious if using soap nuts liquid to wash the cars instead of chemical cleaners will make the paint look better longer. It seems logical that many chemicals actually damage the paint over time and cause oxidation of the paint by breaking it down and stripping the clear coat and sealer. This is not proven, it’s just what I think happens.

Outcome on cleaning cars with soap nuts liquid instead of chemical based car washing products.
Clear winner is soap nuts liquid. But we are winners too because not only do I have a clean sparkling car and wheel rims but I don’t have a guilty conscience about adding to pollution by washing my car.

Next post will be about how soap nuts are beneficial to the environment on many levels.

I’ve replaced about 80 percent of the toxic, chemical based cleaners in my home with soap nuts in the last month. Even though I’ve found so many uses for them I am always looking for more ways to use soap nuts, which brought me to this great article on CopperWiki.

Soapnut , which has a great deal of background about what soap nuts are, but also has sections on uses for them for cleaning and for health related conditions.

Here’s an excerpt of the article to get you started with creative uses for soap nuts:

• Natural Laundry Detergent
  Hand wash or machine wash, when used with cold water tends to soften clothing. Especially used for fine wool and silk in preference to chemicals.
• Powder, Shampoo and Skin Cleaner
  Soap nut is excellent for washing and bathing both humans and pets. It acts as a natural exfoliant and leaves the skin with a soft, smooth layer which protects against infections and insects. It also prevents hair loss.
• Pesticide-Buster
  The Soap nut solution can be used as a spray to repel and prevent a wide variety of pests and blight, including aphids and blackfly. Recently in Agriculture Research Institute, Taiwan, a molluscicide and a fungicide were developed with the use of extracts from Sapindus mukorossi seeds, effectively controlling golden apple snail (Ampullarium canaliculatus) and powdery mildew on muskmelon and tomato.
• General Purpose Cleaner
  Cars, Motorbikes, Jewellery & Silverware wash: Gives a glossy finish removing dirt and grease. It is also an excellent wash for Mechanic’s hands, stained hands due to the same reason.
• Toothpaste
• Fruits & Vegetables Wash: Most of us are unaware that many of the fruits and vegetables we eat are grown using harmful chemicals and sprayed with pesticides to increase their shelf-life. Scientific tests have shown that a ten minute soak in soap nut solution will remove upto 95% of the surface pesticides and chemical residues.
• Cardamom Wash: Used for washing and bleaching cardamoms to improve the colour & flavour.
• For cleaning & washing dishes, floors, glass and metal surfaces: Acts as a disinfectant and is 100% biological and biodegradable. It is also excellent for septic tank drainage systems.
• Mordant: It acts as a fantastic mordant in the process of vegetable dyeing of the silk and cotton yarns, removing the need for both alum and caustic soda and rendering the fibres soft and yielding to colour-depth and fastness. No other mordant is required for most natural dyes as soap nut has a lovely light brown natural dye.
• Medicinal purposes: It is used commonly in the Indian Ayurvedic Healing system for
  Skin problems, eczema, chronic itching, removing pimples, psoriasis and the treatment of scabies.
  Dandruff
  Lice and and other parasites
  People with allergies, neurodermatitis and people with sensitive skin, should use soap nuts as other chemical detergents often provoke an aggravation of their ailment.
  The fruits are credited with expectorant and emetic properties and when prepared by an Ayurvedic doctor it can treat epilepsy, chlorosis and excessive salivation. It is also used as a sedative to the uterus and is used to ease childbirth. It can also be prepared as a digestive aid, an anti-venom, or to treat diarrhea, cholera and paralysis.
  The powdered seeds are said to possess insecticide properties. They are employed in the treatment of dental caries.
• Reetha fruit is so rich in iron it is considered a hemolytic and is used often to treat anemia.
• The soap nut tree when in bloom Attracts Butterflies”

Be sure to read the entire article if you have time because there is other great information about soap nuts there, including information about growing a soapnut tree.

Again the link to the entire article on CopperWiki is http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Soapnut

If you want to purchase soapnuts now without waiting for my reviews then visit our Order Soapnuts page for a list of suppliers.

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.

Check out this great video from Threadbanger for some tips:

Here are some other excellent videos for homemade cleaners and personal care products like soap.

This week I’ve been trying out the homemade chemical free cleaner I created with soap nuts liquid, vinegar, and water and I was thrilled with the results.

Unfortunately I didn’t take the time to take before and after pictures to share just how well it works, but since I have other things I want to try to clean with soap nuts, I will take pictures of the results and share them in the future.

To give you a few ideas on what I used it on with success:

• Mildew on grout and shower tiles
• Painted doors
• Car windows
• Cabinets
• White appliances
• Chrome faucets
• Toilet exterior and lid
• Glass doors on shower enclosure
• Television screens
• Computer monitor screen and trim

We have smokers in our home and often entertain people who smoke, so nicotine build up on the television, computer monitor, glass in pictures, mirrors, and windows and doors is an issue in our home. Although traditional toxic window cleaners will clean the nicotine stains and buildup I much prefer a chemical free, non-toxic glass cleaner which is why I now use soapnuts tea cleaner on all glass surfaces in my home.

Even my sceptical partner couldn’t deny how it cleaned the finger and hand prints off the inside of our front doors, which are white. We sprayed the  patina on the brass handle of the front door with the soap nuts liquid and it looked brighter.

If you already know what soap nuts are and have purchased some but have only used them as a chemical free laundry detergent alternative then please keep reading.

Soap Nut Uses:

• Chemical free laundry detergent
• Chemical free dishwasher detergent
• Chemical free window and glass cleaner
• Chemical free stove top cleaner
• Chemical free gold and silver jewelry cleaner
• Chemical free plant cleaner
• Chemical free stainless steel polish and stainless steel pot cleaner

Some of the uses listed above require you to create what is commonly called “soap nut tea”. There are two recommended ways to do this.

1. Soak one cup of soap nuts in 4 cups of water overnight, pour the soaked soap nuts and water into your food processor and liquify the nuts, then strain the liquid into a bottle. Be sure to squeeze every bit of juice out of the chopped soap nut mixture. Store in cool dark place.
2. Bring one cup of soap nuts in 4 cups of water to boil. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Allow soap nuts to cool. Bundle the soapnuts into cheesecloth or a muslin bag and squeeze all the liquid out of them into the pot of soap nuts water. Now allow to cool and pour into a bottle. Store in cool dark place.

After receiving my shipment of soap nuts from Lullwater Soapnuts I used the stove top method to make soap nut tea. I pour it undiluted into my dishwasher soap cups and filled the rinse agent cup with distilled white vinegar.

WOW … sparkling clean plates, glasses, and silverware. What I love about that is that it reduces my cost of dishwashing drastically, there are no harmful or toxic chemicals being baked onto my dishes, and the soapnuts tea that goes down my drain is not polluting the environment.

The vinegar as the rinse agent ensured that my glasses were spotfree and saved me the expense of a packaged rinse agent. Since vinegar is anti-bacterial I can be sure my dishes are sanitized as well as clean.

Many dishwasher powders, gels, and liquids now contain chlorine based bleach. When I used those and ran the dishwasher my whole house stunk of bleach, which meant that every member of my household was breathing toxic chlorine vapors.

I can only imagine how much bleach residue was being baked onto my dishes, glasses, and silverware in the drying cycle; and then passed into my family’s bodies when we ate off the plates.

An added bonus is that the pot I boiled them in sparkled after I rinsed it with water. No need to wash it, it was already soap nut cleaned.

I also made a small difference in my carbon footprint because there was no packaging to recycle. I actually put the boiled soap nuts into a muslin bag and tossed that into my silverware container in the dishwasher to add a bit of extra cleaning to my dishes.

After I’d run the dishwasher I just dropped the used soap nuts into the garbage disposal, although you can also toss them on a compost heap because soap nuts are naturally biodegradeable. I don’t have a compost heap, but from my reading I know that soap nuts, which are naturally anti-mibrobial converts my wastewater from the dishwasher from blackwater to greywater because no toxic chemicals are being drained f. If you wonder about those terms check out the Wikipedia article on greywater 

Next post will be recipes for mixing soap nuts liquid with other non-toxic household items to create a chemical free window and glass cleaner, and how to make an antibacterial hand soap that is chemical free, and enviromentally friendly.

Our goal is to be a central resource for all the available information about soap nuts online. If you find a resource we overlook please post a comment and share it with others.

What we’ll be providing is information about soap nuts, where to buy them, reviews of soap nuts suppliers, and creative ways to incorporate soap nuts into your life, for all purpose a chemical free cleaning.

Rarely are we impressed with something as much as we have been impressed by the excellent cleaning results of soap nuts. Often we find claims of online merchants for some products can be overblown marketing hype. Not true in respect to soap nuts. They are everything they are cracked up to be (pardon the pun).

What is most impressive to us about soap nuts is that they are sustainable, environmentally friendly, and completely natural. In fact soap nuts actually add the opportunity for economic growth to the indigenous people who harvest them, and better yet there is no machinery is used in the harvesting. The soap nuts fall to the ground and are gathered, deseeded, and generally packaged in the most minimal way.

A win for all involved in the use of soapnuts as an alternative to manufactured detergents, soaps, dishwasher powder or liquid, shampoos, and window cleaners.

Please visit http://soap-nuts.info often to discover all the ways you can use soap nuts in your everyday life.

If you enjoy our blog, or find the information of value to someone you know please be sure to share the link with others.