Soapnuts

My shipment of soapnuts arrived! Yay!

These two bags - 1 kg in all - are supposed to take care of my laundry for the next 24 months!

I've been looking everywhere locally for soap nuts as they are the easiest, cheapest and most hypoallergenic thing you can put in your wash. I had some samples of them which lasted for even more washes than the packet claimed, and was absolutely won over.

My local co op said they had actually considered these but decided they didn't work. I wonder what that meant? These won't make your whites fluorescent, but frankly even cricketers aren't expected to look whiter-than-white these days. When you take the clothes out of the wash they don't smell like detergent - rather, they smell like wet clothes! After you line dry they just smell like clothes - neutral.

Warning: if you use these for any length of time, you will start to feel faint from the chemical smell just walking past the laundry section at your supermarket!