Maggie's Pure Land Soap Nuts

Before you begin reading this review, be forewarned: I am a little crazy when it comes to laundry... 

When I first got my soap nuts, I read the directions and initially I was slightly confused- the number of soap nuts you use depends on whether you are using hot or cold water, and there was information about making a soap nut tea.  So many options!  I was doing a load of sheets, and I always use hot for sheets to get rid of dust mites, so I threw two soap nuts into the cloth bag, and dumped it into the washer.  I loaded my sheets, turned in the water, and read the rest of the brochure.

Wait...soap nuts don't create suds?  How will I know I put enough soap nuts in?  How will I know my clothes aren't just getting a good rinsing?  (Did I mention that I am a worrier?)  The brochure sounded reassuring- so I waited until the laundry was finished, and was pleased that everything appeared clean.

Still, I worried.  I really loved the idea of using soap nuts, but I wanted to know for sure that everything was getting cleaned.  I decided to do a little field testing.

I took a white washcloth and poured some grape juice, spaghetti sauce, chocolate soy milk, and cranberry juice (which actually doesn't make a very dark mark) onto it.  It was like I was trapped in a laundry commercial...all I was missing is a grass stain!

All the stuff I spilled on the wash cloth set for 3-4 hours, and I didn't do any pretreating.  Two soap nuts and a load of hot towels later, and the grape juice stain was the only one that stuck around, and even that was significantly faded.  Check out the before and after photos under the action shots tabs to see for yourself.  The bottom of the after washcloth appears stained in the photo, but is actually just in shadow due to our crappy apartment lighting.

My cleaning power concerns have been proven wrong- and I am now a soap nut believer!

I got the trial size of soap nuts and tried it out last weekend. The directions basically just say to put a 'handful' of soap nuts into the pouch and let 'er rip. The trial size came with 5 soap nuts and I didn't know exactly what a 'handful' was, so I just put all 5 in the pouch. It also didn't specify anything about water temperature. Since I always do my laundry in cold water to save energy (usually use Tide Coldwater detergent), I decided to try one load with the soap nuts out in cold water, and the second load with Tide Coldwater, and compared the results.

The big test was with one of my shirts which had some sort of weird stains. I pre-treated it with some Biokleen cleaner, then tried the soap nuts, but the stains didn't come out. I then put some more Biokleen on and tossed the shirt in with the Tide Coldwater, and they still didn't come out, so that test was a wash (pun intended).

All the other laundry came out equally clean with the two soaps. The laundry washed in Tide didn't smell like anything, whereas the soap nuts laundry had a very light but pleasant smell of 'freshness'. So overall I'd say the soap nuts performed just as well as conventional detergent.

In terms of cost, the soap nuts cost about $34 for 200+ loads if you buy them in bulk (the nuts are supposed to last for about 5 loads each), whereas Tide Coldwater costs about $52 for 200 loads. So not only do the soap nuts have the advantage of being completely natural, but they're also cheaper. If they continue to do as good of a job as the Tide, I may have to switch to soap nuts when my Coldwater detergent runs out. I'm impressed!