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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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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