Non-Toxic Laundry Solutions

 Getting Your Clothes Clean without the Toxins

Since we know Facebook and Google stalk our moves it was not surprising “Crystal Wash” and other laundry balls started showing up Getting Your Clothes Clean without Toxinsas adds in my Facebook feed. The claim to these was that they can deep clean and disinfect by increasing the pH of your water. Still in my laundry struggle, I bought an Amazon version to try them out. Zero cleaning production. Four kids, one who recently potty trained. Our clothes get dirty. These did not get them clean at all.

 

Some things just seem to good to be true and they usually are.  According to tests they did (on the “real” non bargain brand balls), stain removal was better than hot water alone but washed clothing far worse than any detergent. The entire review may be read here:

http://laundry.reviewed.com/features/crystal-wash-tested-does-this-detergent-alternative-actually-work

 

What’s next?

Soap nuts. Soap nuts have been around forever. They seemed almost too simple. Being determined and having failed at every other avenue I decided to give them a try. I bought a bag off amazon and reluctantly tossed them into the wash waiting for another failure. This time I was pleasantly surprised.

 

What is a soap nut?

Soap nuts are actually berries (therefore they are nut allergy safe.) that contain a natural soap called saponin. Saponin can penetrate the fabric to clean unlike your average “soap” They do not “foam” like most commercial soaps. You can buy organic ones which means they were collected in the wild and do not contain any pesticides (generally a non issue since apparently insects do not enjoy their taste.)

 

You toss a handful in a bag and put them in the washer. They last about 5 loads (you can take a peek in the bag to see if they are done if you can’t keep track. I have also heard of people using a dry erase marker right on their machine to keep tally. Chances are with two teenagers also doing laundry that will never be accurate here.

The Results:

So far I am a fan. They are not going to brighten your clothes so you need to toss something in with your whites periodically-then again I always ran into that with any detergent. They are getting our clothes clean-and did get put to the test towards the end of our potty training. If you are still searching for a natural way to clean your clothes without the toxins this is the closest I have come and will stick with it for as long as I see them working.

Dryer Balls in Laundry