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I got my first official question by email today. Yay!
“Have you ever tried soap nuts? I just read about them and am intrigued.”
Follow that intrigue! Yes, I have used soap nuts for my laundry, and they worked well. They’re nontoxic, economical, and SIMPLE. Ingredient list: soap nuts.
For those wondering what I’m talking about, I’ll let NaturOli, a good soap nut company, explain:
Very simply, soap nuts are the dried shells (or husks) from the soapberry (or soap berry nut). These berries are the fruit from a quite unique tree species. These shells contain a substance called saponin that produces a soaping effect. Saponin is a 100% natural alternative to chemical laundry detergent and cleansers. It can replace many chemical detergents such as those containing sodium laureth sulphate (SLS) that are becoming well known by consumers for being a skin irritant and health hazard.
Soap nuts have been used for centuries throughout the world as a laundry detergent, as soap for personal hygiene, and as a cleanser with a plethora of other uses. It is most commonly used in India, China, parts of Europe and numerous countries in the eastern hemisphere. (source)
[Note: A blog reader alerted me to some underhanded advertising on NaturOli’s part. I do still believe they sell a good product, but will not be supporting them further with my business. Their marketing is not illegal, but it is misleading and not to my taste.]
After rehydrating them in warm water, you put a few of these shriveled up “nuts” in a muslin bag and toss it in with your laundry. Clothes come out clean. Amazing, right? As I write this, I’m not entirely sure why I stopped using them after my experiment a few years ago. Two possibilities:
1) They were less mainstream and, thus, less available back then. Now I see that both Amazon and Vitacost sell them. That’s a big improvement.
2) They’re a wee bit of a pain, with the rehydrating and the fishing them out of the load before it goes into the dryer and the keeping up with how many times you’ve used them. Maybe for me they’re too much of a pain, especially since I have help with some of our laundry, and I strongly suspect Miss C would not love soap nuts. They do require a mental shift.
Fortunately, problem #2 is easily solved by using a liquid soap nut extract.
Unfortunately, once you get into the world of more complex products, things get more, well, complicated — no matter what kind of cleaning or personal care product you’re considering. You either have to trust labels and brand marketing (note: NOT RECOMMENDED), or you have to look at ingredient lists, which means you either need to know your stuff already or you need to scour Skin Deep (the Environmental Working Group’s database) or SafeCosmetics.org for information on every. single. ingredient. And both mainstream and “green” products often sport ingredient lists 20+ items long.
Fun times.
Here’s the kicker: often, no one really knows how harmful ingredient x or y is. Sure, a disturbing number of common ingredients in cosmetics and household products are known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters (peeps, the FDA is SO not looking out for you in this department!), but there are thousands and thousands of other ingredients, many of them new, many of them intended to replace the ones we know are dangerous. They might be safe, they might not be. You can waste a lot of time and energy worrying about ingredients that actually are safe, or even choosing ingredients that look safe now but in 20 years will be deemed toxic.
You can also become OCD. That doesn’t help anybody.
That’s why I’m a growing fan of SIMPLE. I wish I had figured this out sooner, but going green, nontoxic, and healthy can be much less complicated if you can make a fundamental paradigm shift: You have to stop looking for the “green” exact one-to-one replacement of what you’re using now. Skip sophisticated “green” alternatives to Tide and Tilex and look for short ingredient lists. Go back to basics. Real soap. Vinegar. Baking soda. Lemon juice. Elbow grease. You get the picture. See how plain ol’ soap nuts would fit right in?
Because I’m trying to create a great resource with this website, and because I’m curious myself, I did look at NaturOli’s liquid ingredient lists. Lucky you.
Lucky for me, the lists were short. Bravo, NaturOli! Personally, I would buy NaturOli’s laundry concentrate, but not NaturOli’s shampoos because the latter contain lauryl glucoside, a surfactant. Others wouldn’t be so fussy, but we are removing all detergents and surfactants from our household. While reading up on eczema, I stumbled across information on soaps vs. detergents. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, but it looks like detergents, even plant-based ones like lauryl glucoside with no known toxic effects, increase skin permeability and can cause irritation in sensitive people, especially babies.
[Oooooh! I mentioned babies! Insert gratuitous photo of one Baby Bear.]
[That photo is completely relevant, see, because he’s wearing clothes. Laundered clothes.]
Now, see how this is could be an opportunity to go cray-cray OCD and look up every laundry and cleaning product known to man? Or . . . I can consult a few trusted resources and choose among the simplest options. What I use now for my laundry is 1 teaspoon of Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild liquid castile soap + 1 Tablespoon of washing soda.
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Look! Plain soap and washing soda. Basic. Since it’s simple for us to swap out these products, I’m doing it. No big deal for us. It’s doing a great job and is gentle on Baby Bear’s skin. But I wouldn’t hesitate to try the soap nuts liquid either.
Want to know what else I’m using in our home and on our bodies? Check out my Nontoxic Living resource page in the Home + Family tab. I updated it recently!
For further reading:
(Note: I have removed a link that appeared here previously. A reader alerted me to underhanded marketing on the website.)
Soap Nuts FAQs — She’s not blogging anymore, but Lindsay of Passionate Homemaking was a big fan of soap nuts and answered some common questions in this post.
SafeCosmetics.org — research on a few ingredients you definitely want to watch out for, and why
Blog post from Lisa Bronner on why sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) can be appropriate in cleaning products but not in body care (But, of course, those of us avoiding all surfactants and detergents because of extreme skin sensitivities/eczema would skip all SLS, period.)
Deciphering Soap and Bodycare Ingredients – Beware of the “-eth” — another post from Lisa Bronner with useful info
SkinDeep — the EWG’s database of personal care products, cosmetics, and ingredients; just be sure to observe the data gap, as lots of ingredients/products get low hazard scores because we don’t know anything about them yet
SolveEczema.org — a mother writes about how she cured her baby’s severe eczema by switching from detergents to soaps; lots of technical info on the difference between soap and detergent
Now, what about you? Do you find going “green” and nontoxic stressful, or have you found ways to simplify the process? And have you heard of soap nuts?