Exchange your laundry detergent for baking soda

by Kiza
(Friendswood, TX)

My husband and I have become increasingly environmentally friendly, but one of the toughest things for us to adjust were our laundry habits. We wanted to make changes there, too, but we also wanted our clothes to be clean!

We were forced into looking for alternatives when I became pregnant. I've had asthma for some time, and the chemicals and synthetic scents in regular detergents were making me sick. I also worried about what they would do to my baby's sensitive skin.

After doing quite a bit of reseach, I traded out myt laundry detergents for baking soda. I was pretty skeptical at first, and my husband was convinced that I was crazy, but we've both been very pleased with the results!

Three-quarters of a cup of baking soda gets a full load of laundry clean with no added chemicals and no residual gunk left on the clothes. (This means it works great on cloth diapers!) Our clothes no longer hold on to body oils or smells like they used to.

If I have something particularly nasty to wash, I add two drops of tea tree essential oil. When my husband said that he missed the scent of traditional detergents, two drops of lavender essential oil added to the wash did the trick.