Adventures in learning how to treat our Earth more gently and our bodies well, while still enjoying a life filled with good things.
Soap nuts work!
By Coralie, on February 11th, 2009 at 08.41 AM
Category: 
If you’ve been watching, you may have seen that I mentioned in a reply to a comment in the microfibre cleaning post that I bought a sample pack of soap nuts just recently. So far, I’ve used them in two loads of washing: a bunch of towels which had been sitting in a pile in the laundry for far too long. They came out smelling fresh and clean and much softer than I had anticipated.
They’ve just now proved themselves on something which I would consider to be a difficult stain.
Yesterday, I was in my garage and had moved my car out of the way so that I could access the space. My car has a slow leak of engine oil and I’d stepped in a fresh drop of it with my bare foot without realising it until I walked back into the house and left a confusing trail of black dots on the white tiles. I used my green ENJO cloth to spot clean the tiles and it worked beautifully as it always does, but there was now a big spot of grease on my cloth.
I was about to reach for some normal soap but then I thought I’d test the soap nuts, so I wet the cloth with some hot water, took a small piece of one soap nut and rubbed it directly on the grease stain. As is usual and normal for soap nuts, there was almost no evidence of suds, but the grease came out with just the smallest amount of rubbing.
Consider me impressed.
I’ll test them out on some other stains as I have the chance. I have a five year old boy and I’m a messy eater, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunities. 
On a related note, I hope to be stocking soap nuts for sale very soon.
Possibly related posts:
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I want some!!
What are they like, price wise, in comparison with “ordinary” soap
Hi, Sheri!
I guess that depends on what sort of oridinary soap you’re talking about.
Sheri, I mentioned in this comment how much they work out to per wash, if that’s what you mean .. ?
Hey Coralie, I’ve gone through ALL of your posts and I’m totally in love with your site. I’ve been wondering about alternatives to washing powder. I have a front-loader and I buy I think it’s called the Green brand powder - have you ever looked into making your own washing powder? I’ve wanted to but I’ve got a very limited budget, and also not a lot of tools to make it - most recipes I’ve looked at involve boiling huge amounts, or having to use giant buckets, which I just don’t have the money for right now. I’ve got a list of recipes for making your own washing powder if you’d like them. But what do you use? And where do you get these soap nuts from?
Cheers!
@ Tash: I’ve never really looked into making my own washing powder. It seems a lot of trouble to go to for one user. If you want to find soap nuts, just Google Australian sites for it. There seem to be a few places selling them. Some sell it in a powder form, so you could try it that way, if you like.