Soap Nuts

Soap nuts uses are varied. Although many people use soap nuts as green cleaning products for laundry and personal care, some soap nuts users have gotten very creative. Soap nuts liquid makes for even more creative possibilities. For instance using soap nuts liquid to repel insects without any chemicals.

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.

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Soap nuts users often ask if their white clothes will be white enough without adding bleach.

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.

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Soap nuts powder  was the subject of a previous post about the wonders of it as a chemical free scouring powder. Today I need to revisit the topic to add a bit of clarity.

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.

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Soap nuts once again come to the rescue in my home. This time soap nuts got pressed into service as a chemical free upholstery cleaning solution.

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!

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Soap nuts are the central ingredient in my house cleaning and laundry practices. But with the holidays my fine china, linen table clothes and napkins, and the fine silver gets used and often abused.

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.

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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 am not a fan of soap nuts powder as a natural laundry detergent. Soap nuts powder in the washing machine is probably the least cost effective way to use soap nuts.

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.

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As the holiday gift giving season quickly approaches, everyone is counting pennies. Soap nuts are a perfect gift for so many reasons and for so many people.

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.

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I have never been a domestic goddess. On the contrary, I have always hated housework and cleaning, but until I started using soap nuts 4 months ago I didn’t understand why.

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.

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In the last few months I have gone crazy finding new ways to use soap nuts in place of chemicals in our house.

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.

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