Wash balls - Laundry balls - Eco balls (merged)

squeaky

Hiya

Yep! You were right, we have an older thread on these eco balls so I've merged the two together for you into a single thread. Since posts are listed in date order you'll need to read from the beginning of the thread to catch up.

freyaluck

My dad swears by them and he's a mechanic so gets very mucky. But he does add 1/4 of a cup of cheapy powder, never had a problem with them. Not sure why I'm not using them myself acctually.
Well I'm off to post on freecycle and see if I can get some for free :-)

1sttimer_2

freyaluck - what's freecyle?

squeaky

https://www.freecycle.org

A set of local on-line communities where people arrange to give away items that they would otherwise put out for the bin men and so go to land fill.

The only stipulation is that the items must be offered FREE

Austin_Allegro

From what I've read, these balls would seem to be placebos - the biggest factor in getting your clothes clean is agitation (which is why we used to have washboards etc). The fact is you just don't need a lot of soap powder (or any at all for light soiling) so rather than spend money on balls you could try, as I do, using economy soap powder on a half dose, which seems to work ok. I have yet to see any peer-reviewed scientific evidence in favour of balls.

What really makes me suspicious about the balls is if they work so well, why do they need to be sold with a detergent stick for 'stubborn stains'?

meadowcat

Well, I got two of these balls and tried them. I really really wanted them to work, but I just didn't feel that they did - even though I live in a soft water area. And Rikki is right, they don't last as long as they are supposed to. The ones I got said each ball would do 80 washes. It was more like about 20/30, so it's defo not economical. I should say that I did not buy the expensive ones, but I presume the idea is the same.

So I just went back to using soap powder, but as other users say, you can get away with much less powder than recommended, especially in soft water areas.

Mikki

It's a load of old cobblers! All that nonsense about "activating the water molecules" and "releasing the natural cleansing power of the water"!

I am a water treatment engineer, and can tell you that there is no such thing that will "activate water molecules" or "release the cleansing oxygen" from the water! It's just a load of technobabble to make you think it's some kind of amazing product.

There have been trials comparing these eco balls to just doing a wash with no detergents at all. As others have said, the way they work is by agitating your clothes in the machine. Most modern washing machines are now so good that we can probably get away with doing our laundry without any soap powders, unless your washing is really dirty or has stubborn stains.

Most people probably don't have the confidence to wash their clothes without any washing powder, so these eco balls are a way of convincing you otherwise, and a way of making someone very rich!

Go on - save yourself some money, give the eco balls a miss, and ditch the soap powder!

meadowcat

"Technobabble" ...... love it!

1sttimer_2

Mikki wrote:

Most modern washing machines are now so good that we can probably get away with doing our laundry without any soap powders, unless your washing is really dirty or has stubborn stains.

Go on - save yourself some money, give the eco balls a miss, and ditch the soap powder!

This reminds me of my friend who ran out of soap powder and decided to borrow some from a neighbour as she needed to wash her coat. When it had dried she thought it looked really clean and so she asked her neighbour what soap powder she gave her as it was better than her usual brand. Her neighbour replied 'what soap powder did I give you? - I've not given you any soap' It turned out that she THOUGHT she'd asked for some soap but didn't and washed it without and it came out better than usual! :snow_grin

She still uses soap though lol!

If I just used the arial 'balls' without soap would it work as it would give more agitation? I'm doing all my washing now, so may give it a try. I'll post my results on here so watch this space!

lovelyjubbly

Now to go one step further, if you want to try to wash without powder or, if indeed you use eco balls, cut out the rinse programme(this is only for sad money savers like me) you have to work out roughly how long your wash cycle is, then when your machine starts the pump to drain to go onto rinse cycle, turn it off and move dial straight to spin, this saves loads and loads of water (if you are on a water meter, or want to be ecofriendly) also the washing comes out warm/hot and when you put it through the tumble dryer, or on the line it seems to dry quicker, the only drawback is having to watch the machine for when it moves to rinse, but with practice it is worth the effort! rinsing is not necessary without the powder or if you use ecoballs

p.s. of course you also save on electric ! and the time it take to do the wash is cut down dramatically