Soapnuts

Chell

Beanietdc wrote: »

This site... http://www.inasoapnutshell.com/?gclid=CJ7Mta_z1YoCFRYVEAodkQTkDQ offers a free sample so you can have a go before paying out.

Go to the bottom right of the page for the address... just needs a SAE.

Hope this helps.

On this one the sample is free but you pay postage. Postage is by weight so it shouldn't be much. I haven't proceeded to checkout so I'm not sure how much it is.

angelatgraceland

If the clotheses are not coming out clean I wonder if:
You used enough soapnuts
You possibly overloaded your machine.
Ive found them to be good but it also depends how efficient your machine is. Maybe try hem on a longer wash cycle? Try a slightly warmer wash? I don't use them on stained items or anything heavily soiled. I use them on about 70% of my washing.

black-saturn

I raved about them when I first got them but after a while the dirt on my clothes built up and I had to go back to using powder I'm afraid. Now i use Bold 3

Sadierhianne

Hmmm if you compare chemical filled powders which contain phosphates, enzymes, bleach and whetever else then you know that you should get a good clean wash - not always the case though and you pay an awful lot of money for it. WITH a little half shell which has come off a tree that contains nothing but saponin, a natural soap, nothing else added, no bleaching agent nothing then expecting miracles to happen in the washing machine is not going to happen.

I think that they are primarily sold as an environmentally friendly option and everything environmentally friendly does require - if it is completely natural - a certain degree of extra work.

Cramming a machine full of clothes is bad for the machine anyway - most of us do it, washing powder disolves in the water and that water is then absorbed by clothes - if you washed your clothes in just pure water for a few washes you would still find bubbles in the washer - it is very difficult to rinse out and powder doesn't rinse out after the usual rinse cycle. This is why you ned to use conditioner. You don;'t need conditioner with soapnuts hence the over all savings.

So as purely an economical purchase and without understanding the positive effects on the environment and your clothes, i'm not sure that soapnuts would be appreciated to the max. Adding borax or soda crystals or ecover laundry bleach will help to boost the wash, this of course adds to the cost of laundery BUT because soapnuts i think are a naturals product then the benefits to the environment outweight the financial cost.

I like them, i do add soda crystals but i don't use them for all my laundry.

We all sweat, more excessively in some areas than others but every bit of our body sweats - you can bath daily but still if you didn't clean your bath for a week it would have a greasy residue on it, this si the sweat and sebum that our bodies secrete - so if it is washed off in the bath, it stands to reason that it is also getting into our clothes - soapnuts don't contain harsh chemicals that deal with this, just a very natural soap which may not cope with sweaty clothes - it brings out blackcurrant stains very well though and a host of other stains but it may fail on other stains like grease marks. So by adding a degreasing product like soda crystals, you should tackle the grease build up in clothes and you wash be cleaner and brighter. Using a stain remover on stains will also help. Soda crystals are cheap to buy and you only need a little, you still wouldn't need fabric conditioner and depending on which powder and conditioner you used prreviously - the cost of them - you would still get a slightly cheaper wash per load BUT the main benefit really is that you are no longer leaving your clothes full of nasty chemicals, you aren't flushing the nasty chemicals into the water system - one which is already polluted terribly and it means that the water that you drink and put back into your body is less likely to be contaminated. The water cleaning process is supposed to clean water completely but how do we really know this?

I think that if you want to use soapnuts simply to cut costs then you will not be entirely happy with them if comparing them to usual powders.

As for damaging washing machines, the bags need to be tied very well, i prefer to use the end of a pair of tights tbh, the ties on the bags can come undone during the wash cycle and could block the pipes on the machine - they do not disolve. I have used a variety of drawstring bags now and not really found any of them to be great, i tie a hair bobble around the tied end to make sure that there is no escape BUT i had more problems with blocked washing machines when i used powder because it doesn't always disolve and the dispenser drawer was always getting blocked. Occasionally soapnuts do escape, like the coins and screws and bits and bats do that people leave in their pockets, so i clean out the filter on my machine on a regular basis when using sopanuts but often they just get in amongst the clothes and fall off on the line.

Some people will like them and some people will hate them - i think using a washing powder like ecover every so many washes will help to get rid of grease and grime if you aren't happy with the colour of the clothes, mine stay white but i do use a booster in the wash so this helps.
Things like overloading and excessively dirty loads will also have an effect on how well they work - when using powder i always added more to a really dirlty load, the same with soapnuts, i use the guide as a guide and add more shells if i think i need to.

If it says 8 half shells will was up to 4 loads it means up to 4, this might only be three, i read yesterday how someone got 7 loads out of their so many half shells, again dependent on load sizes, efficientness of machine, amount of dirt etc.

Elfinwings

Wow, these look great, I'm off to order some to try right now!

Thanks

vreynard

I would like to reiterate the comments made by Sadierhianne above.

I have been using soap nuts for a while and have found them to be surprisingly effective. However, being an entirely natural product, there are certain limitations that need to be considered.
Firstly I bought a quantity from a number of different suppliers to check consistence. They were all much the same in that they were an approximate 50 / 50 mixture of honey coloured shells and darker, harder shells. Not being a botanist I didn't know if this was significant. I would suspect that the lighter colour are nuts picked straight from the tree (they seem “stickier”), whilst the darker are perhaps wind falls picked from the ground?? The point is, which (if either) would contain more saponin? Would the darker shell require higher temperatures? As it is likely that there would be some difference, should you try and use a similar mix of light and dark for each “bag fill”?
Is anyone still reading these ramblings??
Anyway if the amount of saponin released is dependant upon water temperature and hardness (less dissolved hence more nuts needed in hard water areas). OR do you simply need more “soap” to overcome the hard water and the amount of soap released is the same?
I also found the little bags a bit of a pain, awkward to open and a tendency to unravel. Furthermore, being a bit dim, I tended to forget how many washes a set of shells had done! I suspect an old sock would be more convenient.
So, being naturally lazy, I made up a litre of soap nut “juice” by simmering about 14 half shells in 1.1 litres of water for 30 minutes and allowing to cool. Sieved the result through a old brewing bag into a 1 litre fabric conditioner bottle. Theory being that the boiling should have removed more of the saponin than 40 / 60 wash. When fully boiled all the shells were dark. Does this support the suggestion that the lighter colour shells have more “soap”?
Experience has shown that just 75ml of this works fine. So a 1 litre should be good for 13 washes! So even more economical than the shells alone.
Another advantage is consistency. With the shells you don't really know when they are exhausted, the liquid should be the same throughout. It also reduces the rinse problem as the "bag of nuts" will not be there.

It can also be used to “spot” stains and hair wash / hand wash / car wash / dog wash etc.
With hand / hair wash be aware that, because it contains no Sodium Laureth Sulphate (SLS), there is virtually no suds so you can use much more than necessary. If you want to know how nasty SLS can be, Google it.
Allegedly soap nuts are also a mild insecticide so, if you can arrange to collect the waste water, its good for the garden. However you will need a BIG tank, I’ve tried it once and the machine filled 4 X 3 Gallon buckets from one wash! Maybe just collect the rinse water.
I'm currently researching different suppliers to see if I source a more consistent quality.

It is only reasonable to add a bit of Sodium Carbonate (washing soda) in a hard water area. If should help stop the machine furring up if nothing else.
Sodium Percarbonate (sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate) breaks down in warm water to S.Carbonate and oxygen which helps remove "stubborn stains".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_percarbonate

P.S. What are stardrops?? David Bowie fan club? Sci Fi groupies?

savvy

Just a little note for anyone wanting cheap essential oils, I've recently bought essential oils from this company - http://www.justessentialoils.co.uk/

They are a really good price with most of the commonly used ones well under the £2 price mark, and the service has been excellent as well as a prompt delivery :T:T

emma396

I received my soapnuts today. I showed my dad and he said people used to use them in the 60's in china when they couldnt get soap. Apparently they crushed them and boiled them to get soapy water. He reckons putting them in the washing machine won't do anything coz the soap won';t diffuse into the water. I've not tried yet, but feedback on here makes me believe washing machine will work.

WifeofDJFLP

I've used soapnuts in my washing machine for about a year now, I have to stick in a little bio powder (about a desertspoon) for whites but other than that I've no problems.

My eczema is better and my coloured clothes are the same colour they were when I first bought them and I must have saved a fortune.

WifeofDJFLP
xxx

samtheman_2

how mich bicarbonate of soda do you put into a whites wash?