clean clothes - the natural way

Have you ever wondered if laundry balls really work? They claim that if you add them to your washing machine they’ll clean your clothes without detergent. They do sound great – for the pocket and for the planet – but a quick online search and sadly it looks like they are not that great (Choice Magazine, as well as many bloggers, say laundry balls give same results as washing with just plain water).

But one thing they did do for me was to get me thinking. What’s so bad about laundry detergents? And is there a better way to wash your clothes? I’ve found the answers I was looking for in a Natural Cleaning & Home Detox Workshop. Turns out laundry detergents have some really nasty things in them. Some I’ve found particularly shocking: 

• Sodium: Used mainly to bulk up laundry powders due to its low cost, sodium has devastating effects to plants in general. As it’s very hard to remove sodium from wasterwater, it is a contributor to soil salinity. You can read more details about the bad effects of sodium here.
• Phosphate: Phosphate in itself is a good thing. It’s a fantastic fertiliser. It’s essential to agriculture, which in turn is essential to feeding our hungry world. Phosphate is a limited non-renewable resource so, just like oil, the day it runs out it will run out forever. So it rarely seems wise to waste phosphate in cleaning clothes rather than fertilising crops. Another downside of sending phosphate down waterways is that it stimulates growth of blue-green algae which is toxic for humans, animals and plants.
• Optical whiteners: These vile dyes stick to your clothes, adsorb UV light and convert it to a blueish light, giving the impression that your clothes are clean – without actually cleaning them. They can cause rashes in sensitive skin and are harmful to aquatic life.

In the workshop we were given recipes for several natural cleaning products and I decided to start off with a natural laundry detergent recipe:

1 cup washing soda

1 cup bi-carb soda

¼ cup pure soap

8 drops eucalyptus oil

2 cups hot water

Dissolve washing soda in hot water.  Gradually mix in other ingredients, blending well. Transfer to a well sealed container.

The end product is sort of like a thick paste with a fresh scent of eucalyptus. I add 2 heaped tablespoons to each load and it cleans as well as any regular laundry detergent. It dissolves easily, so you don’t get any white detergent marks as you sometime get with laundry powders.

The other thing I liked is that all ingredients can easily be found in any supermarket (no need to find specialised health shops!) and the overall cost of my homemade laundry detergent is only a fraction of the cost of commercial ones.

I’ve now been using my homemade laundry detergent for over a month and I’m loving it! Even my hubby, who is sceptical about it all, is happy with it. We are saving money, the planet and still walking around in clean, fresh clothes. There is no way I’m ever going back to commercial laundry detergents!

In the workshop they recommended ½ cup of white vinegar as fabric softener. I’ve tried that too and it works quite well, especially with towels (I bet no fabric softer will get you fluffier towels). It leaves no residual smell of vinegar in your clothes at all, but it does in the washing machine itself. It’s not a problem if you have a big well-aerated laundry area but as mine is a little bigger than a cupboard, the smell is a tad overwhelming. I’ll keep testing out natural fabric softener recipes and will post one suitable for small flats once I find it!

japanese cloth bags (furoshiki)

A friend of mine sent me this post on traditional Japanese cloth bags that replaces plastic bags (in Portuguese I'm afraid, but I later found furoshiki instructions in English too).

The furoshiki technique consists of folding and tying knots to a piece of fabric to make it into different types of handbags, carry bags and even gift wrapping.

Come to think of it, I do remember my grandma using tea towels to wrap lunch boxes (bento). They were handy to carry and could be used as tablecloth when eating – perfect for picnics!

I can see how they would be handy as shopping bags too, especially for those small, unplanned visits to say the local veggie shop. Chuck them flat folded in your hand bag and quickly tie the knots at as you arrive at the shops.

I sewed two pieces of fabric together using the same method I’ve used for my hand sewn cushions. My furoshiki fabric was about 110x110mm (it took me ages to hand sew it, I really should look at getting a sewing machine).

For my next furoshiki project, I'll probably go with a thinner material or perhaps one instead of two pieces of fabric. When sewn together, my furoshiki fabric was so thick it was hard to tie small knots. In the bags where the knots are inside, I basically have no room left for anything else other than my mobile . :)

recycling dumped furniture

I am often appalled by the things I find in the rubbish area of my building. Every week there are lounge sets, bookshelves, office desks, chairs – all in great condition other than normal wear and tear. I just can’t believe how some people can simply dump all these things and send them to landfill!

If I find any item that matches my own furniture, I take it home, give it a good clean, a small fix if needed, and reuse it. That already includes an outdoor dining set, two bookshelves, decorative willow branches, a brand new air-cooling unit and a couch/single bed.

Any other items in good condition but not matching my furniture receive the same treatment and goes on eBay for $0.99. It is a little bit of work to clean it up, take good photos, write up a nice ad and then organise the sale and pick up but it’s so rewarding to know nothing has gone to waste.

Still, I can only do so little compared to the amount of things that are dumped. Is there a better way to deal with this? Is there a way to make people think twice before sending good furniture to landfill? I’d be interested to know.

simple homemade christmas gifts

I can’t believe half of January is already gone! I hope it’s a sign that I’ve been having a good time. Either that or I’ve been really REALLY slack with my posts because here I am still posting about my Christmas crafts.

I’ve made these cookie jars for my work colleagues. As we didn’t have a kris kringle (aka secret santa) in the office this year, I had to come up with an affordable homemade gift to be able to give a gift to everyone rather than having to pick only a few people.

These charming glass jars actually came from my office. For some reason they don’t buy coffee in bulk and as a result we have two or three of these great looking airtight glass containers going to the bin every week. They are recycled but still... reuse comes before recycle!

So I’ve collected a few week’s worth of empty coffee jars, took them home and soaked them in water so I could remove the stickers.

I used scraps of felt and ribbons (most likely from previous Christmas gift wrappings) I had at home for the decorations. I baked a few batches of cookies and after they cooled down I filled up the jars.

Such a simple gift, so low cost and so fun to make. And made all my colleagues – and thus myself – so happy! Oooohhh... I miss Christmas already!!

recycled christmas tree

Not having to host Christmas this year, I went for much more modest, yet not less fun to make, decorations than the recycled christmas tree I've made last year. This is a project from Green Eyed Monster, and it costs absolutely nothing - to you or the planet - to make. All you need is one (or two) old magazines and some very, very basic origami skills. You could I guess spray paint it to fancy things up but I quite like the rustic, crafty look of the magazine pages.

origami kitty

I had fully forgotten about these kitties! My sisters and I made them back in 2002 or 2003 for a not-for-profit charity that aimed to find loving responsible homes to rescued cats. They were made out of paper and felt scraps we had a home. It's really quite simple to assemble them, it's just take ages to fold up each individual triangle-shaped origami that makes them up.

They were sold on their online shop to raise funds and we even had a few orders from cat owners wanting an 'origato' (that's how we called them - 'ori' for 'origami' and 'gato' for 'cat' in Portuguese) that looked like their own cats.

recycled xmas tree

This is the tree my husband and I made last Christmas. We used a gumtree branch we found in the park and sprayed it white. We made the decorations with milk cartons, by cutting two of each shape and pasting the outside together, leaving the pretty silver lining on the outside. There were trees, birds and stars and for a touch of colour I painted wooden pegs red with little white dots.

We hosted Christmas Eve dinner and to keep it with the good-for-the-planet theme, there were no disposable plates, glasses or cutlery. The little red trees were made with the same milk cartons, which had red bits on the outside. The "ho" "ho" "ho" you can see in the picture were used cardboard coasters we got from our local pub, the Bank Hotel. They had four different types of coasters, "BA", "NK", "HO" and "TEL", which complemented each other like a puzzle. I hope they didn't notice they were down a few "HO"s.