Soap Nuts-Truly Safe and Effective way to Clean your Laundry!

Have you ever thought about what your laundry goes through each time you do a load of wash? Well, considering the fact that your clothing then spends so much time on the bodies of you and your family members, don’t you think you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to really be concious about this in the future? You will probably never look on the back of a traditional jug of laundry detergent and see a full list of ingredients. The companies simply won’t do this. Scary don’t you think? I mean you wouldn’t knowingly allow your children to soak in a tub of chemicals would you? So why would you soak the clothes that would go on their little bodies in something without knowing what the exact ingredients are. One of my least favorite terms is hypoallergenic. This term can be used in so many ways that a consumer comes away thinking that the product just HAS to be safe. Did you know the FDA has set no standards for use of this term so companies can basically make it mean whatever they want it to mean and aren’t required to prove that the product is in fact better and safer for you, the consumer. The other word that you will see on most every jug of detergent is fragrance, but what you won’t see is WHERE the fragrance comes from. Usually it is from an artificial source, something synthetic or man-made and certainly not anything I want in the water with my family’s clothes. I think it is funny to hear people sometimes say that their clothes “smell” clean. Well, that “smell” had to come from somewhere and most likely it wasn’t nature and is not safe for you, your family or the environment. So many of these artificial indgredients are especially harmful if you have someone in your family with any type of skin sensitivity. These are just a few of the reasons that I use soap nuts for cleaning my family’s laundry! Yes, that is right I said soap nuts and they actually grow on trees in Asia! They are a highly sustainable resource and provide an income for small local farmers there. Basically, soap nuts are actually the shell of the soap berry. They are harvested once they fall from the tree and the fruit(or seed) is removed since it doesn’t have any cleaning properties and is then used to plant more trees. The shells contain what is called saponin which acts as a natural soaping agent. It is the safest, most pure way of cleaning your laundry as opposed to harsh chemicals found in traditional detergents. Really, the more soaping, the less I would want to use a product since it may actually contain SLS(sodium lauryl sufate) which has been found to be harmful to our skin and to the environment. Soap nuts are not chemically treated at all and come to you truly as natural as they can be and with minimal waste! I have to tell you that even though I was always good at recycling the plastic jugs, I always hated how they piled up and took up so much space in the recycling bin. With soap nuts, they come to you in a small bag and a separate smaller bag for the actual washing process. Just toss a few in the bag, tie it up, and wash! There is no need for fabric softeners or dryer sheets because soap nuts will soften fabrics naturally!! I mean, I wish you could feel the difference that I am trying to explain. It is amazing!! Every now and then, just like with traditional detergents, soap nuts do need a boost of help so I sometimes add Borax to the load. This is a natural, inexpensive product found in your store’s cleaning aisle and has so many household uses beyond the laundry room. You will actually find this to be true with soap nuts at well. They can be boiled into a liquid or ground into a powder and used for such things as to wash your dishes, your hair or even your dog all while being completely safe and pure for you and the environment. Check them out here and see for yourself how wonderful they are for you, your family and the environment.

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