Make Your Own Cloth Diaper & Laundry Detergent {Only 2 ingredients!}

We recently ran out of the cloth diaper detergent that I was using on our diapers. Both of my boys have sensitive skin and eczema, making it very difficult to find something that their bums will do okay with. There are only 3 cloth diaper safe detergents I can use on their cloth diapers, Eco Nuts being one of them, however I wish the Eco Nuts would leave a little better smell to the diapers. They don't smell stinky or dirty, they do smell clean, but a plain natural clean and I'm not at all used to that. 

I've been thinking about making my Eco Nuts into a liquid form and seeing if that would help the smell a little more. My washer does not get all that hot and you need hot water to release the saponin (the soap) from the Eco Nuts. While visiting the BunchaFarmers Facebook Group I can across this recipe for a concoction of Eco Nuts liquid soap and BunchaFarmers Stain Stick Remover, so I thought I'd give it a shot! 

You take about 6-8 Eco Nuts, break them up into smaller pieces so that more of the saponin can be released easier. 

Put them in a pot of boiling water, reduce heat a bit to avoid over flow (the saponin in the soap nuts can cause quite the fierce boil over). 'Cook' for about one to one and a half hours. 

After 'cooking' your Eco Nuts, strain the soap you've just made into another pot. After I strained all of the Eco Nut shells out I took a spoon and pressed it against the Eco Nuts to get the remaining saponin out. 

 

 While I waited for the Eco Nuts, I grated about 5 tablespoons of the BunchaFarmers Stain Stick. I don't have a grater, but a butter knife worked just as well!

After draining the Eco Nuts, I returned the liquid to the pot and back to the stove. I added my grated Buncha Farmers Stain Stick and stirred it while heating it to help melt it. In the photo above the milky looking liquid is the melted Buncha Farmers and the darker liquid is the Eco Nuts saponin. It does mix together quite well, I mixed it better after taking the above photo.

I let the concoction cool for a bit and then filled three ice cube trays with it, two of my trays were quite small so I had a bit left over. Just pop them into the freezer and once they have become frozen all the way through you just pop them out into a zip lock baggy and place back in the freezer. I found that these melt pretty quickly. I actually had to put the two smaller ice cube trays back in the freezer to refreeze them as they melted while I was popping out the larger tray. This recipe makes enough for about 21-32 loads using only 6-8 Eco Nuts. A medium box of Eco Nuts is only $9.99 for 100 loads, when using Eco Nuts whole you get about 10 washes out of them, making a liquid soap out of them with the bunchafarmers DOUBLES the number of loads you can do with the same about of Eco Nuts. A stick of BunchaFarmers is only $4.42 and when grated a stick equals 17 tbsp, this recipe only calls for about 4-5tbsp equaling about 4 loads if my math is correct. I know there are much cheaper homemade CD safe detergents, however we unfortunately can not use those with the boys skin problems and this one works great!

I put 3-4 of the smaller or 2 of the larger ones into a cup to take them down to the basement other wise they melt in my hand on the way down there and I'm on the first floor. Just toss them in the wash and run your hot water! The amount of ice cubes you would need may depend on your water type, we live in the city, have soft water and we're only about 5 minutes away from the water sanitation plant. I also used up the liquid I had left, but didn't have enough ice cube trays for, I used about 1/3 of a cup of the liquid per load. You can keep the liquid in the fridge, but I would make a smaller batch and make sure it has an 'air tight' sealed lid. I don't think it would really last much more then about a week in the fridge, however depending on how often you do laundry you may use it up before it goes bad. I do at least 1-2 loads of cloth diapers in a single day on top of all the other loads of laundry for a family of five. I probably could have gotten away with putting the liquid in the fridge, however with two toddlers who think they should be in the fridge, I wanted to avoid them opening and spilling it all over. 

Do you make your own laundry detergent or cloth diaper safe detergent? Do you think you might try out this recipe?

Disclosure: This is not my recipe, I used the recipe on BunchaFarmers, Inc. Facebook Group from another BunchaFarmers user. I was not compensated for this post, I just wanted to share it with all of you as I have made it, use it and like it. Enjoy!

There are NUTS in my washer and they are amazing! Eco Nuts Soap Nuts Review & Giveaway US 7/11

What are Soap Nuts?

Eco Nuts Soap Nuts are a berry that grows in the Himalayas that naturally produces a soap. This soap is called saponin which is a natural cleaner that works as a surfactant, breaking the surface tension of the water to penetrate the fibers of your clothing and lifting stains from the fabric while leaving dirt suspended int he water that is then rinsed away.

Eco Nuts are gentle on both clothing and skin, they are ideal for those with sensitive skin, eczema, allergies and psoriasis. Due to them being so milk, they are perfect for baby clothes and cloth diapers. They are All-Natural making them great for septic and grey water systems. Don't expect these shells to foam up like your commercial soaps that have artificial foaming agents. Foam simply does not represent cleaning power!

Eco Nuts are gathered from wild trees grown without any kind of chemicals, fertilizers or pesticides. The saponin actually tastes bad to the insects so no pesticides are needed. The trees naturally love poor uncultivated soil, they are organically grown by mother earth and certified USDA Organic by Oregon Tilth. Eco Nuts Soap Nuts are both de-seeded and sterilized, they are the only soap nuts on the market that are.

What if you have a nut allergy? 

If you remember from the above section, Eco Nuts Soap Nuts are actually berries. Don't let the name throw you off or intimidate you from using them. As some of my readers may remember, my 3 year old, Cade has a tree nut allergy. 

If they are not nuts then how did they gain their name you may be wondering as I was as well. They have been named "nuts" because they dry into hard shells like a nut shell. 

Our Eco Nuts Experience!

 

Eco Nuts are an Organic Laundry Soap, but with out the mess and spillages of powders and liquids. Although Eco Nuts does offer a liquid form as well. Eco Nuts are fragrance free, hypoallergenic, biodegradable (no waste to be left behind), non-toxic and kills odors making them great for those stinky cloth diapers. 

They look strange for something I was about to toss into my washer to clean probably the dirtiest things I've ever had to wash, my cloth diapers from two stinky toddler boys! I received a 100 load box of Eco Nuts, it also included two small bag with drawstring for you to put your Eco Nuts in and then toss that into the washer. 

I read the box, which are the directions for when washing laundry with Eco Nuts, so I put 5 Eco Nuts into the bag, closed it up and tossed it in my washer with my load of cloth diapers. What I should have done was read a bit more about using Eco Nuts to wash cloth diapers, but it was time to wash some diapers and I was way too excited! After reading a bit more however, I did find out that you only need 2-4 Eco Nuts in the cloth bag when doing cloth diaper laundry, also, if your washing machines gets really hot you need even less Eco Nuts! My washing machine does not have a hot setting, the hottest setting is hot/cold and I'm almost certain the water I wash my dishes with is at least twice as hot as the washing machine. 

 

There's nuts in my washer and balls in my dryer!! What is going on here?! Oh yea that's right, something that is awesome, better for the environment and for my little monkeys' bodies!

You can even leave the cloth bag with the Eco Nuts in it through the entire wash cycle, including the rinse cycle! How so? Because the rinse cycle has much cooler water causing less saponin to be released. Very little of it is released during the rinse cycle. If you accidentally toss the bag of Eco Nuts into the dryer and dry them, no problem, they are still usable and not ruined! You can even use Eco Nuts in a front loader and HE machines.

After two loads of diapers I opened up my cloth bag with the soap nuts inside and above is what I found. Not a huge difference then what I put in to the bag, the nuts that were whole have just separated into two pieces. You can continue to use your soap nuts that are in your cloth bag for approximately 10 loads or until they begin to disintegrate, please see the chart below for a better idea of what they may look like. 

It's like a bad habit, I always have to sniff my cloth diapers and other laundry as well when I pull it out of the washer. I do so to make sure the diapers and laundry are clean smelling, especially the diapers. When I pulled out my first load I wasn't sure how they would smell, kind of thought they would smell a bit "weird" because they were washed with nuts that are actually berries and while the nuts in the box do not smell bad or weird, I still just wasn't sure. Anyhow, when I sniffed my first load of diapers that were washed with soap nuts I was in AW! I could not believe how clean they looked, felt and smelled clean!! I'm either going crazy or they were actually cleaner as well, dingy, old and well pre-loved before our use of some diapers looked brighter!

This is ONLY the second thing I have found that is okay on my boys' skin!! As some of you may know or remember from previous post both of our boys have sensitive skin and eczema. We have tried at least 7 other cloth diaper safe detergents and they all caused horrible rashes/burns of some sort or they caused bad build up, etc. I also love that Eco Nuts really do eliminate odors and do not just cover up the odors with the strong scents of the detergents. We've tried many different CD safe detergents with scents and with out, but nothing like Eco Nuts! Other detergents with out scents left our diapers smelling like dirty water. I truly am in love if you haven't been able to tell by now. 

In additional to washing our cloth diapers with Eco Nuts, tomorrow I will begin washing the boys' clothes with Eco Nuts as well. Eventually I'd like to also wash all laundry with Eco Nuts, but for now I want to preserve them for cloth diapers.

So how do you store Eco Nuts? That's simple! Just keep them in a cool and dry place! 

Eco Nuts is a 2-in-1 Natural Fabric Softener, contains no optical brighteners, no dyes, is fragrance and SLS free. SLS is sodium lauryl sulfate, a hormone disruptor. 

Eco Nuts medium 100 load box is only $11.99 that's just $0.11 per load! The large 360 load box is $34.95 at just $0.09 per load and the liquid Eco Nuts detergent 60/120HE loads is only $18.99 making it $0.31 per load in a standard washer or $0.15 per load in an HE machine. More amazing bang for your buck with Eco Nuts!

Are you hooked yet? Connect with Eco Nuts and try them for yourself!

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Giveaway!

Enter to win a 100 load box of Eco Nuts Soap Nuts! Open to US residents whom are at least 18 years of age. This giveaway will end on July 11th at 11:59p.m. Simply enter through the Rafflecopter form below for your chance to win! Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

Disclosure: I received a box of Eco Nuts in exchange for my honest review. I received no monetary compensation for this post, please note all opinions and experiences are my own and may differ from those of your own.