This Natural Wonder Can Replace All the Cleaning Supplies in Your Home

Going all-natural with cleaning supplies ,  personal care products, and food has many great benefits for our health, the environment, and animals. Less demand for chemical-based products means less need to create them, slowing down the manufacturing of many  chemicals and all the byproducts that eventually make their way to our water sources, air, and land . Using natural things that won’t harm us makes a lot of sense.

Another benefit that many folks miss out on is that, when made at home, all-natural cleaners can be a huge relief to our wallets. Soap nuts are a fantastic, all-natural, renewable means of making our cleaning solutions, without all of the dirty stuff. You can use them for laundry, dishes, and even personal hygiene! All you need is a handful of these natural wonders, and you can kiss all your other cleaning products goodbye!

What’s more, is that they are super cheap, and with just a few other basic ingredients (and recipes), all of which are inexpensive as well, it’s very easy to compile a home-cleaning DIY collection that’ll perform every bit as well as the chemicals but at a fraction of the cost.

The Starter Kit

Like healthy food, healthy cleaning products begin with real ingredients rather than synthetic chemicals . Nature provides all the things we need to feed ourselves, and similarly, all the things we need to keep our surroundings clean. In addition to soap nuts, to get started with DIY cleaners (as well as personal care products), there are a few things worth buying in bulk and keeping around the house: borax, washing or baking soda, Castile soap, vinegar, and essential oil (citrus generally feels right, but options abound). All of this can be found in nature and costs very little for the items they produce.

Even so, it’s a good idea to understand the basics of each of these elements.

• Borax is a mineral found in some salt deposits and is an extremely alkaline substance that can cause serious skin burns when not diluted or disturbed if ingested. Still, it is a powerful cleaner often used with clothing. (Note: It is not boric acid!)
• Baking soda, from which washing soda is made, comes from the ground in the form of nahcolite, and it is used in all sorts of natural cleaning and personal hygiene concoctions, including toothpaste and dishwashing soap.
• Castile soap is an entirely plant-based soap that costs about a dollar a bar. It can be ordered online.
• Soap nuts grow right on trees and contain an element — saponin — that softens the surface of water so that it can clean things better. They are easy to grow organically, very inexpensively, and completely renewable.

Doing the Dishes

Manufactured dishwashing liquids, soaps, and powders can be harmful to our personal health and the environment , and in fact, the use of questionable chemicals with carcinogenic characteristics (for animals and us!) and damaging properties to the environment (especially our dwindling water sources ) is protocol these days. Instead, we can make simple, safe dishwashing soap — used for hand-washing or in a machine — with soap nuts and other ingredients. Try mixing 1 cup of each borax and washing powder with two tablespoons of grated castile soap and ground soap nut shells. For light loads in the dishwasher, it’s perfectly functional to use soap nut liquid detergent , made by boiling the crushed soap nuts for about half an hour.

Cleaning the Clothes

The most common use of soap nuts is in laundry. The sap found in the berries (nuts) softens the water so that it can effectively penetrate clothing and get it clean. By placing a few berries in a cloth sack (the number varies from a couple with hot water to half a dozen with cold water) and washing clothes with a normal cycle, we can do away with harmful elements found in laundry detergents and fabric softeners with a single easy-to-use naturally occurring item. For those who prefer liquid laundry detergent, use a couple of ounces of soap nut liquid.

Washing the Windows

What good is a beautiful view of that backyard garden or the park across the way if the windows are smudged and dirty? It’s understandable: We want clean windows. However, it’s not worth, nor is it necessary, using a bunch of chemicals like ammonia and 2-butoxyethanol  to get there. Soap nut liquid (1 Tablespoon) with a little vinegar (2 Tablespoons) and some water (1/2 cup) will cut the grime away without the damaging effects commercial window cleaners additionally provide. It’s so simple and cheap that one can’t help ask why we would have ever done it another way .

Scrubbing the Surfaces

Finally, we scrub everything, worried about harmful bacteria and whatever else might be lingering on our kitchen counters, the bathtub bottom or even the toilet seat. Of course, we are worried. We want our families to be safe. But it doesn’t take much investigation to figure out that many of the products we use to combat bacteria are just doing damage in their own way and not just to our health but also to the environment. But, you could make a soap nut scrub to get the job done economically and ecologically. Either use the soap nut liquid as is or combine it with a little vinegar and water for a general surface cleaner.

For those not familiar with soap nuts , they are nothing new. They’ve been around and been used as a cleaner for centuries. They can be ordered online for super cheap, and they are very easy to handle. Happy cleaning!

Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

• Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster , the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store, to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks or browse through vegan recipes on One Green Planet .
• Adopt-a-Pet: Visit WildWatchers , a watchdog platform specifically designed for animal, earth, and wildlife warriors to actively give back, rescue, and protect animals and the planet.
• Reduce Your Fast Fashion Footprint : Stand against fast fashion Pollution by supporting circular brands like Tiny Rescue , which create cause-based collections using recycled, zero-waste clothing designed to be returned and remade, ensuring it never ends up in a landfill.
• Shop Sustainably for Your Home : Visit SustaiNOBLE.org, an eco-friendly and ethically sourced home decor store that will empower your home with luxurious fair-trade, and sustainable products made by global artisans.
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• Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, Donate if you can, grow your food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don’t forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!