Five soap nuts in a cotton bag will disintegrate as they dissolve to clean your clothes without harsh chemicals.
We live in a rural area and are on a septic system, so in the last couple years I have become more conscious of what kinds of detergents and soaps we’re putting back into the ground–because they go right into my back yard, which abuts a wetland. Our town recently banned phosphorus fertilizer use near the river, and the scum that plagued it my entire life has largely disappeared. That was a wake-up call to me to pay attention to the kinds of fertilizers, detergents, and other chemicals I’m using around the house, including all the laundry detergent we use on baby clothes and cloth diapers.
Last year, I learned that there was a laundry detergent called soap nuts, a natural soap used in south Asia for hundreds of years that was made of dried fruit and was 100% biodegradable, and I have been wanting to try it ever since. When I contacted Maggie’s Pureland to see if they would be interested in sponsoring a review and giveaway of their now-famous soap nuts, they sent me not just a box of soap nuts but also a container of their soap nuts liquid. It has been a great opportunity to thoroughly test their product.
To use soap nuts, you place 5 soap nuts in the cotton bag provided in the box, and put the bag in with your clothes in the washer (not the detergent dispenser). For HE washers you would use 2-3 soap nuts. Five soap nuts will disintegrate within 5 washes, at which point you throw out or compost the husks and replace them with more. You can even remove stains from your clothes by rubbing them with a soaked soap nut. How cool is that? The liquid soap nuts you use just like a liquid chemical detergent, by placing it in the detergent dispenser as you would any other detergent.
One ounce of Maggie's Soap Nuts liquid works just like a traditional detergent but is biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
When I ran my first load of diapers with Maggie’s soap nuts liquid, we had just come back from a vacation and I was so busy getting back into normal daily life that I let the diapers sit in the pail an extra day. Oops. That’s quite a test for any detergent. I used the recommended 1 ounce of the liquid in the detergent dispenser and ran my usual hot wash plus two rinses. The diapers needed an extra rinse to come totally clean, which didn’t surprise me. But the liquid soap nuts cleaned my diapers as well as my other favorite detergents, which include Lulu’s Glamour Wash, Rockin’ Green, and Allen’s Naturally, and I like the fresh woodsy scent. The wash comes out smelling just like clean clothes, though, which is good.
Next I tried soap nuts on my clothes. I noticed when I put the soap nuts in the cotton bag that they had a slightly odd smell, but when the clothes came out of the wash they smelled perfumed, in a nice way.* I experimented with different size loads to make sure that was supposed to be the case. I tried a few different loads of clothes and it seems my washer likes about 4 soap nuts, because 5 gets me extra-perfumed clothes, which I suspect means the “detergent” isn’t completely washing out of my clothes, but 3 soap nuts didn’t seem to quite clean my whites well enough.
It will take some experimenting to figure out the best balance for my diapers as well, which didn’t seem to get as clean with the soap nuts. If you do extra rinses with your diapers, using soap nuts could be a little more complicated than using the liquid, too, because you either need to add the baggie after your pre-wash and take it out after your hot wash (if your washer lets you) or you have to leave it in for most or all of the wash cycles, which will get more detergent on your clothes (this could be good or bad) and wear out the soap nuts sooner. I left the soap nuts bag in the wash most of the time, which could be why my diapers weren’t getting clean unless I used fresh soap nuts. I suspect the soap nuts were being disintegrated by the final rinses of my wash loads, so they were too used up to go another round of wash.
If you’re interested in trying soap nuts, I would recommend you try both the liquid and the traditional soap nuts before dismissing them. If you know you like to keep things as simple as possible, you should spring for the pricier liquid, which works just like your current detergent. You can also buy samples of the soap nuts if you want to try them before committing to a whole box. Both options are great for the environment and are gentle on your clothes, and Maggie’s Soap Nuts sustainably harvests their nuts so you don’t need to worry about contributing to deforestation, which is an issue when trees are razed to harvest their nuts (yeah, it happens).
Note: Upon reading this post, Stacy from Maggie’s explained my experience with my clothes becoming perfumed this way. Good to know. I will post an update when I have done enough loads to test this idea:
“Another thing to note is that saponin (the component in Soapnuts that changes the water into a cleaning agent) will work to remove old soap scum from your washing machine and your clothes. This works as a natural fabric softener and will take a few cycles before removing all of the old stuff left in your washer from other detergents. So you may have fragrance in your clothes and brownish spots on your washer a couple of times before it is all gone. Hope this makes sense and explains the fragrance you are smelling after using soapnuts. Soapnuts themselves will leave no scent on your clothes at all.”
Cool, huh? I guess I need to try each wash routine a few times before changing the number of soap nuts in the wash, because I may get different results once my washer is totally clean. I’m curious to see if using soap nuts long-term means I no longer need to occasionally clean my washer with vinegar!
Here’s how to enter this giveaway:
For this giveaway, one lucky winner will get to CHOOSE their prize: a 5-load sample of soap nuts or an 8-load bottle of soap nuts liquid. For your first entry, tell me something you learned from Maggie’s website. Remember, this entry is mandatory, so you must do this before any of your other entries count.
Extra Entries:
Hooray for extra chances to win! Leave a separate comment for each of the following things you do (e.g. “I blogged about your giveaway #1, I blogged about your giveaway #2,” etc.) Please be sure to include your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
You can get extra entries in this giveaway if you:
1) Tell me your current favorite diaper detergent (1 entry).
2) Follow @29Diapers on Twitter (1 entry). Please include your Twitter ID in your comment. Current followers count, too!
3) Tweet this giveaway w/ @29Diapers included in the tweet: include a link to your tweet (1 per day).
4) Post this giveaway to your Facebook status: include a link to your status update (1 per day).
5) Blog about this giveaway: post a link to your blog post (3 entries).
6) Post this giveaway in an online forum or linky: please include a link to your forum post or the linky (2 entries).
7) Become a Maggie’s Pureland Soap Nuts Facebook fan (1 entry) and a 29 Diapers Facebook fan (1 entry). Current fans count, too! Please include your FB user name in your comment so I know who you are.
8 ) Add a link to 29Diapers on your blog/website (1 entry) or grab my button from the 29Diapers.com homepage sidebar and post it on your blog (2 entries).
9) Subscribe to 29Diapers via email at the bottom of this post (1 entry). Don’t forget to confirm your subscription. Current subscribers count, too!
10) Comment on a non-giveaway post (1 entry).
Contest is open to U.S. residents and ends at 11:59 p.m., July 31, 2010. Winners have 72 hours to respond to my email, or another winner will be drawn. I can’t be held liable for lost mail, prizes that don’t arrive, etc. but if you have a problem receiving your prize, please contact me so I can make sure the sponsor has mailed it to the correct address. Good luck!
I learned that you can reuse the soap nuts until they are no longer slippery. They last longer when used in cold water. Interesting! I would love to win this one because we are struggling to find a detergent that keeps away stink in our BG & Flip diapers.
I am also a fan of 29diapers on facebook. (Jessie Powers Young)
I learned that you can make a “tea” by soaking the soap nuts to be used in cold water washes.
I subscribe by email!
I just got my first box of soap nuts and would love to try the liquid! I’ve only managed to wash 3 loads with 3 nuts as I’m only washing my toddlers night time wet diapers so I don’t know how it does on stains. But I am so impressed by how beautiful & clean everything comes out. On some other sites I read before buying my first box people had said they started washing all their clothes in soap nuts because of how thorough the wash came out. I’m about to start doing that myself.
From the site I learned : I don’t need a fabric softener even though I have hard water.
My current favorite diaper detergent IS Maggie’s Soap Nuts!
I just became a twitter follower: ID tzingers
Here’s a link to my tweet on this giveaway: http://twitter.com/Tzingers
http://www.facebook.com/0sandy here’s a link to my status updated with the giveaway.
I’m a current subscriber to 29diapers. I hope I win!
So I checked out Maggie’s website. I’ve done a lot of looking into soapnuts online, so the only new thing I learned was that you can use them for stain treatment. Seems so obvious when you think about it, though
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Some of the other sources I looked into said that soap nuts should only release their saponins in warm or hot water, so the rinse cycles aren’t ‘supposed’ to affect their longevity. Good to know that some experimentation might be necessary.
PS I’m enjoying your blog, and have you in my google reader now
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Learned from website – Soap nuts is a natural fabric softener.
Current favorite detergent – Rockin’ Green
Current blog subscriber via email
Non giveaway post – Create The Perfect Night-time Diapering System
I learned that you can use soap nuts for silk and wool also!
I learned that soap nuts can be used in hair care as well!
I didn’t know that soap nuts are the dried berries of the Chinese Soapberry Tree.
sarah.robot at gmail dot com
We are currently using Country Save for our diapers and all of our laundry.
sarah.robot at gmail dot com
I learned (and think it’s so cool) that you can use soapnuts to make a liquid multipurpose cleaner!
We are currently using Crunchy Clean (but I used a sample of Lulu’s in the Fluff and liked that much better).
I “like” Maggie’s on FB. Name: Erin Lehman
I “like” 29 Diapers on FB. Name: Erin Lehman
Your button is on my blog #1
Your button is on my blog #2
I learned that soap nuts are a natural fabric softener and they also brighten colors.
reynoldsmommy at gmail dot com
My favorite detergent is Rockin’ Green.
reynoldsmommy at gmail dot com
I follow you on twitter! (@reynoldsmom)
reynoldsmommy at gmail dot com
I learned that Maggie’s Soap Nuts naturally soften and add
body to clothes. How great is that?! No more vinegar as fabric softener.
Facebook fan/liker of 29 diapers.
Following you via twitter @azmarry