The first time I ever used soap nuts for laundry detergent I was blown away.  Then I learned you can also powder soap nuts to use as a homemade laundry detergent and my mind was blown again!

There is a small inconvenience to using soap nuts, a trade off I’m totally fine with.  The inconvenience is that you have a little bag you need to keep track of between loads, mushy husks to throw out or compost, and you have to make sure the bag is going to dry out or it will mold between loads.

Powdering soap nuts should have all the benefits of using whole soap nuts without those few drawbacks.  So without further ado here’s how to use soap nuts for laundry detergent by powdering them.

If you are interested in soap nuts, also check out How To Use Soap Nut for Laundry Detergent for my post on using whole soap nuts to wash laundry.

I’ll admit it, I’ve got some nose pores that tend to be a little more dirty than I’d like.  It isn’t a huge deal, but it just seems like I can’t ever really get them scrubbed clean.  Store bought face wash only works ok.  Over the years I’ve tried a ton of different products with more or less the same result of not as clean as I’d like.  So, when I came across a simple homemade pore cleansing solution that was just powdered clay and apple cider vinegar I decided I should give it a shot.

As a guy I haven’t ever been overly eager for a “facial” before, not anti mind you, I never went out of my way to get one though.  For some reason, lately my silly nose pores have seemed a little more uncooperative than usual, so I decided to give this homemade pore cleansing clay mask a shot.

A few months ago my wife and I went to France.  We booked a nice apartment in Vannes on AirBnB (that link will get you $25 off when you sign up for AirBnB) complete with a washing machine.   The owner was kind enough to let us know that the laundry detergent was in the closet.

When I opened the closet to find the laundry detergent all I found was a more or less empty closet with a bag of nuts inside.  After Kelsey and I both dismissed the bag of nuts as definitely not being laundry detergent we decided there had been a misunderstanding, and reached out to the owner of the apartment.

The owner of the apartment kindly explained to the stupid American (my words, not hers) that they were soap nuts, and to just chuck a few in with our clothes and they’d magically be cleaned.  To our disbelief the soap nuts worked amazingly well, and that is how I was introduced to the wonderful hippy magic of soap nuts!

No more story telling from me, here is how to use soap nuts for laundry.

I remember seeing people use dryer balls when I was a kid. I remember thinking that friend’s parents were a little crazy because they were chucking her kids toy balls into the dryer with the laundry.

I recently did a post on how to make your own homemade shoe deodorizer powder which works great.  But there are some shoes that I wouldn’t ever want to dump a load of powder into, and I’m sure you probably do too.

So to solve that problem, I came up with my own solution for homemade shoe deodorizers which doesn’t require you to pour powder into you shoes to get those unpleasant smells out.  Instead the end result is a tidy little bundle that works just as well and looks a lot nicer than a pile of powder too, and you can make them in whatever fabric you like.

Everyone loves their home to smell nice, and making your own homemade essential oil diffuser is a great way to do that without having to spring for more expensive candles or reed diffuser oils to do the job.

One reason I particularly wanted to try making a diffuser using water rather than an oil base was that many people complain about the oil (not the essential oils) in other homemade reed diffusers going rancid after only a day or two.  Personally that’s not something I want to worry about so I decided to just try it with water.

I found a post at ourhomemadehappiness.com who has tried doing the same thing with success, so I figured it was worth a shot.