Ever since I first heard of soap nuts, I knew I had to give them a try. What are soap nuts you ask? Some quick (paraphrased) info courtesy of Wikipedia:Soap Nuts are a product of the Sapindus genus, a group of five to twelve species of shrubs and small trees in the soapberry family. Soap nuts contain saponins, a natural surfactant, which are released when the nuts get wet. They have been used for washing for thousands of year by various peoples including Native Americans, and are a staple in Ayurveda medicine where they are used for everything from washing clothing and hair to reducing excessive salivation.
In summation, soap nuts are a completely natural product (a nut) which produce a naturally occurring soap and which can be composted when your done with it. Sounds almost too good to be true right?
So on to the review. A friend of mine recently bought a bag of soap nuts from Maggies Pure Land company and gave me a few to try. She told me to add them to my laundry by taking 4 or 5 nuts, wrapping them in a mesh bag or handkerchief, and just putting them in with the rest of my stuff in the machine.
The first thing I noticed when I opened my sample bag was that the nuts themselves smell kind of bad. The thought of using something which smells bad to make my clothes smell good seems counterintuitive, so as a test, I decided to try them out on a load full of dish rags. Surprisingly enough, I thought they worked great! Now to be fair, I don't have any scientific data telling me how clean all my rags actually got. However, after a quick smell test and visual inspection, they smelt clean to me and they didn't have any gunked up food on them anymore.
Final words: My girlfriend still won't let me use them on our clothes, but after my initial test, I fully support des nutz.
Image provided by Maggies Pure Land
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