Ethics Trading

A big thank you to Chopsy Baby, who have been trying out Soap nuts for the first time amd have written a lovely article on their blog.

As with many other first time soap nut users, they have come across the few drawbacks of soap nuts straight away.

The very lightly soiled clothes seemed to be fine, such as children’s clothes that had only had light wear. The adult clothes were not as fresh and the soap nuts did not remove the various smells they had picked up.

On their own, soap nuts don’t remove tough stains or get whites as dazzling blue-white as we’ve been taught to expect from media and supermarket washing powders laden with optical brighteners and bleaching agents. These are also laced with chemicals to make the white fabrics almost glow and they do fluoresce under UV lights! I don’t know about you but while that’s quite a cool effect I do worry about what, exactly, is on my clothes and therefore on my skin to make it do that.

So, you can add a scoop of Ecover laundry bleach to your white wash. (or another stain boosting agent or bleach if you want.) Then dry outside on a sunny day, spritz any lingering marks with lemon juice and your white will sparkle.

I can’t say I’ve noticed adult clothes smelling after washing unless they’ve been the result of a long, hard, sweaty day. But then, I rarely have those sorts of days… To address the smell issue I use a few drops of your favourite essential oil to the wash – I drop it onto the bag that the soap nuts are in.

Dawn – an Ethics Trading customer: “Use 1tbsp of vinegar for your softener and add your fav essential oil to make the washing smell nice!”

Jill – Another customer: “geranium or patchouli yummy smelling washing!”

Personal taste is important in choosing your essential oil for fragrance. I prefer tea tree or a light, citrus oil like lemon or lemongrass. I also love lavender, but what you use is entirely up to you. You can have a fragrance to suit your mood, a different scent with every wash if you want to.

It might also be worth looking at whose clothes are the ones with the lingering odours and why that might me. A teenager with rampaging hormones, or someone who does heavy, physical work might sweat more and therefore have that smell on their clothes. It might be worth looking at underlying skin care there too. Many people don’t realise that modern soaps dry out your skin and then it has to work that much harder to rebalance and the bacteria on your skin are constantly out of balance and they are what produces body odours.

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