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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If you aren’t familiar with what soap nuts are then please visit our What are soap nuts? page.

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.

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We hope you’ll find the soap nuts information we offer helpful.

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.

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