These were mentioned on another thread but they are so fabulous I thought I'd come and tell you ALL about them. Grab some fair trade tea, coffee, hot choc or beverage of choice and get comfy ....

Imagine you could get away with using no chemicals in your Laundry. Now imagine there is a single product that would help you with all the cleaning in your house – with no chemicals. Now take the leap and imagine the product I am describing is natural and grows on trees. Sapindus mukorossi, the soap berry tree.

Soap Nuts are actually not nuts, they are a shelled seed or berry - it's the shells that we use. They grow wild in Nepal and India and are a natural source of high quality Saponin. The seeds are useless unless you want to grow a soap berry tree!

To use them you take about half a dozen shells and chuck them in a draw string cotton bag. Bung the bag in the washing machine drum with your dirty washing and set it going. They are odourless so if you want fragrant washing then add a few drops of an essential oil of your choice to the bag.

Soap Nuts contain no bleaching agents and no optical brighteners - so if you like your whites dazzlingly white you might want to add a dollop of Ecover Laundry Bleach to your washing or you could plan to wash your whites at full moon!

Bored yet? No?

You simply need to pop 6 – 8 Soap Nut shells into the bag, do it up tightly and throw it in the drum of the washing machine with your laundry load. Soap Nuts wash effectively between 30 and 60 degrees and this bag full will last for up to 3-4 washes. Your 100g pack is usually good for 3 or 4 refills of your cloth bag and will last about a month. When the Saponin has been used up the shells will look dark and soggy – at this point you can safely throw them on your compost heap where they will help your plants. Refill your cloth bag with fresh shells and off you go again.

Want to know about making the juice for washing hair, car, floors, windows, worktops etc?

I'm about to take some on holiday to do some handwashing with , I have put 8 shells in a cloth bag.

I'll let you all know how I get on , seemed like something light I could pack in my bag to do hand washing with.

Kim

I love soap nuts too where do you buy yours from?

saw this http://www.salveo.co.uk/health/eco/soap ... Egodi07IZw

is it a good deal do you think?

Ethics Trading has them cheaper.

_________________
Sarah
Soap nut expert and home educating Mum of 2.

Thank you

Ok....I'll have a go. Gradually over the past few months I suppose, I've moved over to Ecover and/or the Tesco equivalent for virtually everything. We do the whole recycling thing but the 'green san pro' hasn't yet grabbed me in quite the same way!
Am about to order soap nuts now and will report back in a month or so, ok?

Two different pack sizes can be bought here...

Ethical Superstore

i've read about these before but the one question i have is do they leave your clothes smelling that just washed smell?

i love the smell of clean laundry and i no i'd be disappointed if the soap nuts cleaned the clothes but didn't leave them smelling gorgeous

not very eco friendly i know

It depends what kind of smell you're after
They don't have any perfume at all, so clothes don't smell the way that commercial soap powder manufacturers want us to believe is freshly washed iyswim. You can add essential oils to your rinse if you want a smell, or hang them outside to get that lovely outdoor kind of smell, but otherwise they won't really smell of anything.
After years of avoiding scented powders I find the smell of things washed in them a bit overpowering now tbh.
Katy

i'd never thought of essential oils
are they ok to be used with washing?

julie x