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.