I’ve never heard of soapnuts until I ran into a giveaway featuring them as the prize on Organic Girl’s blog — you can read and enter the contest here.
They are literally nuts that you use for soap right off of the tree! This particular company, Superior Soapnuts, uses nuts from the mountains of Nepal. They are the dried fruit of the Ritha (sapindus mukorossi) tree. Although other trees are used by other companies for soapnuts, this particular tree apparently has the highest amount of saponin in it which is what gives the nuts their awesome cleaning powers.
They are completely all natural, chemical free and come just as they are seen in the picture. You put 3 – 5 nuts in a bag provided, hit it with something hard to break them open and toss it in with your dirty clothes. Nothing else is required. Not even fabric softener as the clothes will come up naturally fluffy and soft!!
The nuts can be used repeatedly until they are no longer shiny with saponin. They can be used between 4 and 8 times depending on how hot the water is that is used to wash the clothes. Lower temperatures are easier on the nuts (lol) and the environment! They even have recipes using the soapnuts to make other cleaners such as liquid soap.
Financially speaking, these make a lot of sense as well. A 500 gram bag of soapnuts can clean up to 200 loads of laundry!! Sounds too good to be true, I know. I decided to buy their trial pack to try them out. At only $1.75 + shipping (super cheap btw), you can’t really afford not to! All natural, chemical free cleaners with muslin bag packaging and all that’s left over is compostable shells. Definitely a must have. I’ll re-post after I receive them and give them a whirl. I definitely do more laundry than you could possibly imagine so these would be a lifesaver in terms of not having to worry about what chemicals are being left on our clothes and linens.
