Clean your laundry with nuts

Then I discovered this unusual solution.  A company called "Laundry Tree" developed an alternative to liquid detergents altogether.  Their product, intuitively called "Soap Nuts," is a canvas bag with sticky "soapnuts" and a few drops of your preferred essential oil.  Laundry Tree has a 100% satisfactionmoney-back guarantee on their product promising "Surprisingly Clean Laundry or Your Money Back!"

 

I tested the $14.99 Soapnut Starter Kit.  This comes with "everything needed to wash nearly 40 loads of laundry with SoapNuts, (plus a few things that you don’t NEED but are really nice to have). You’ll get one 100 gram bag of SoapNuts, one 1 ounce bottle of the scent of your choice, and an extra washbag."  This comes out to be $0.37 a load.  This may not seem much cheaper than Seventh Generation detergents which cost about $0.37 a load as well, but refilling with a 100g bag is only about ten bucks ($0.25-0.29 a load) or economize with a 500g bag for thirty dollars (<$0.20 a load)

 

To use the nuts, you simply add about seven or eight into the provided drawstring canvas bag, add a few drops of essential oil, and toss it in.  When I tested this product, I didn't observe any debris coming from the bag or unusual scents.  In fact, the nuts stayed in perfect shape the first few runs.

 

The downside to this product is that unlike conventional detergent, the cleaning power of the nuts diminishes gradually after each use.  The nuts have an unusual scent as well.  They don't smell bad, but they don't smell "clean."  I found this to be only a problem of aesthetics as my clothes came out smelling like the oil, not like the nuts (as the company promised).  The other downside I found in this product is that it's so delicate, it may lack the ability to fight tough stains.  This is not a problem for me personally as the hardest stain I'm likely to get is a dollop of salsa on my shirt or some dirt on my socks from bike-riding.

 

To try out Laundry tree, you can purchase a small 20g bag for two bucks.  This comes with eight soapnuts and runs about six to eight loads of laundry.  Weighing all these considerations, I like the economy and ecological implications of Soapnuts, but from my findings, it appears to be lacking in the tough abilities of conventional detergents.  I wholly recommend it to some, but don't think it will work for everyone. 

 

I give LaundryTree Soapnuts 3.5/5 stars