Now that we’ve switched to laundry with soap nuts, we’ll never look back, but we weren’t enjoying the extra chore of boiling tea every time we needed clean clothes 
(I rarely use hot water for laundry, but hot water is what draws the cleansing saponins out of the soap nuts – hence the tea for cold water washes). A prerequisite chore to a chore is never fun, and led to serious procrastination as clothes piled up in the laundry room.
Enter, solution: Naturoli Soap Nuts concentrated cleaner. Where have you been all my life?! This is the soap nuts tea already made and bottled – and as a Green Dot award winner, it’s one of the best formulas you can get, pure and free of chemical fragrances and oils.
As you can see, the product is advertised at 96 loads, but when you order, even the manufacturer states you can double or even triple this yield. My approach to maximize it is pretty simple: just pour one capful into a large pitcher and add hot water to about the halfway point. This gives the solution a sudsy light color that mimics what I got when I made the tea from the nuts myself.
A half-full pitcher of soap nuts solution is enough for all the laundry I need to do all weekend – and now it takes only seconds to create and have on hand, as opposed to at least a half hour when you start with the raw materials.
Another bonus – I received a surprise sample of soap nuts body wash with my shipment and I am loving it! This is a great company that knows how to treat its customers well and make it easy to make the switch. At just $18 (I’ll be modest and gauge 200 loads out of this bottle . . . that’s just 9 cents a load!), my laundry is taken care of naturally (for probably at least the rest of the year), I don’t have to lug giant jugs of neon chemical detergents from the store ever again, and it’s so much easier than making tea from scratch . . . even your boyfriend can do it! ;)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Love this! I cannot wait to try it. Sometimes making the tea (especially when you run out and need to do laundry right away) is quite a task. Thanks for sharing this great find!
Hi! I have been researching all different options for greener laundry detergent recipes. This past week I have been reading so many great things about soap nuts. I almost always wash with cold water. I became pretty set on ordering soap nuts but now wonder if I should get the concentrate mentioned in the above article? Is that what you would recommend? If so, I am a bit confused (since I have never used soap nuts) about this “soap nut tea” and then mixing the concentrate with a pitcher of water. In other reviews I was under the impression that you just throw the soap nuts in the mesh bag and toss in the dryer- some said that if you wash with cold just soak the nuts in a hot mug of water and they will be fine. Also, you mentioned that when mixing a capfull of the concentrate with a pitcher of water it is enough to use with your laundry for the weekend. How much do you use per load?
Sorry for all of the questions!! I am trying to make an informed decision! Your blog has helped a lot and I would love if you’d be able to relieve some of my confusion :) thanks!
Personally, for washing with cold water, I always preferred the liquid bottle rather than making the tea myself. I found that the tea had to be used more quickly than I could before it seemed to take on a funny smell. However, I never had this issue with the concentrated bottle. If you get the actual nuts (or berries as they really are), my understanding is that they need warm water to release the cleaning agent, saponins. That’s why you can throw the nuts in a mesh bag and they can clean in warm water that way. I’m pretty sure I just added capfuls of the concentrate to my washing machine and did not pre-mix with water, but honestly it’s been a while since I’ve used them as my primary cleaner (because I love trying new things). Just know that soap nuts are a wonderfully natural way to clean laundry, but in my experience they won’t do anything for stains- so I suggest some sort of natural stain remover- maybe you can find one at a local health store. Hope this helps!