Demetria Organics sent us a sample of Soap Nuts to try in our laundry. According to their website, Soap Nuts (also referred to as soap berries) are the fruit grown on the Sapindus Mukorossi tree. They contain a hypoallergenic cleaning agent called saponin that not only cleans your laundry but is fragrance free, all natural, and complexly environmentally responsible.
Our sample was the usual amount used for a wash load, which is reusable for 3-5 loads: a muslin bag with four Soap Nuts. The Soap Nuts worked as well as a regular load with Charlie’s laundry detergent or Seventh Generation laundry detergent, but the few items we were washing that were unusually dirty didn’t come clean.
To be fair, if we’d been washing with a different laundry detergent, we would have added more or used liquid soap directly on the stains. The website says Soap Nuts can be boiled down to make a liquid detergent. In the future, we plan to try this for use on those tough stains.
The Demetria Organics website also lists recipes for making Soap Nuts into shampoo, glass cleaner, all-purpose cleaner, jewelry cleaner, and powdered cleanser.
www.demetriaorganics.com
