SOAP NUTS —

A great and NATURAL DETERGENT

Medeea
Write A Catalyst
3 min readMay 19, 2024

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Photo by Paul Gaudriault on Unsplash

Soap nuts have more than one use, getting used for laundry clothes, generating residence cleansing solutions, private hygiene, or herbal fertilizer

Soap nuts are the fruits of a special trees, called Sapindus. They can reach a height of 10–20 meters, flowering and fruiting after nine years. They are productive and resistant; the fruits are collected in autumn when they are expected to fall from the trees. The seeds are used to grow new trees or make jewelry.

These nuts are special due to the presence in their structure of a substance called saponin, which in contact with warm water acts as a natural surfactant that helps to remove dirt.

Soap nuts

Several advantages of using these nuts at home:
• they are economical: for example, with two kilograms of washing nuts, they could
wash the clothes of a family of four for two years, three times a week;

• they are organic products;

• are hypoallergenic: being thus intended for people with lighter skin

sensible;

• they are very easy to use: you can put about five walnuts in a sock. These,
in the presence of warm water, it releases saponin;

• they are biodegradable: for example, after you have used the respective nuts, you can use them
in gardening;

  • are antibacterial.
Photo by Alexandra Tran on Unsplash

Clothes can also be washed with soap nut powder, adding two to three teaspoons of powder to a sock, pouring hot water over it, or you can insert it into the washing machine tub.

Try not to put a lot of dirty clothes in the washing machine, because the saponin will not be able to be released very well, and there is a risk that the clothes will not be washed as you want.

However, if the clothes are quite dirty, you can use more nuts.

You have to remember that walnuts cannot remove stains. So be very careful. Besides that, before washing you could remove the stains from the clothes by adding baking soda to them, which is very cheap and can be within everyone’s reach.

Another advantage of using walnuts is that, after washing, the clothes are just as soft as when you also used fabric softener. But to make the clothes even softer than that, you can put a tablespoon of diluted white wine vinegar in the conditioner compartment of the washing machine.

After washing, the clothes may smell like vinegar. But you can stay calm because there is no risk that the smell will permeate your clothes.

For white garments, you could use baking soda or an oxygen-primarily based totally bleach.
This herbal detergent is best for laundry babies’ and kid’s garments.

People who are allergic or be afflicted by the sickness referred to as psoriasis, can use it as a hypoallergenic detergent.

If you need your garments to be scented, use your preferred critical oils.

Nuts can be reused about two or three times. When they no longer contain saponin, their characteristic substance, they become quite soft and take on a brownish color.

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