Course Overview

If you’re ready to lighten your body’s toxic load, cleaning products are an easy and impactful place to start. In this course, you’ll:

• Use an online tool to check the safety ratings for cleaning products you own, so you can decide which you want to keep or ditch.
• Learn how to distinguish the truly green cleaners from those that only appear healthier, so you can make better buying decisions at the store.
• Learn to make your own cleaners with simple and inexpensive ingredients.
• Learn to clean your home effectively with natural products — whether you buy them or make them.
• Gain the confidence to ditch your chemical cleaners for good.

Added feel-good: For those who continue making their own cleaners after the course is done, did you know that the switch to bulk ingredients and reusable bottles is considered a zero-waste solution? I love that!

Make vs. buy? Here’s why we cover both options.

Most natural cleaners are fast and easy to make, but you should be able to buy pre-mixed cleaners with confidence as well.

1. DIY cleaning recipes

You’ll walk away with an arsenal of healthy cleaning recipes using natural, toxin-free ingredients. Life’s busy, so we’ll focus mostly on recipes that take no more than a couple of minutes to make and use just 1 to 3 ingredients that you can buy in bulk.

2. Store-bought cleaners

Pretty images and skillful wording on product labels can make manty ‘green’ cleaners seem healthier than they really are. We’ll use an easy online tool to distinguish the truly green cleaners from the marketing hype.

What’s actually in these ‘green’ cleaners? And are they as natural as you thought? (Spoiler alert: I wouldn’t use these in my home!)

At your pace, one room at a time

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my own journey, it’s that the transition to toxin-free cleaners is far easier than I had imagined… not to mention far healthier. And if you choose the DIY route, it’s also far less expensive!

But getting started can feel a bit overwhelming and trying to make big changes all at once isn’t always sustainable.

I’ve found that small shifts are much easier to manage and tend to create healthier habits that stick. With that in mind, we’ll move through this course room-by-room and at a pace that feels comfortable to you.

Shopping List

You’ll save quite a bit with DIY cleaning supplies, but there is an initial cost to get started. I’ve broken the list into 5 categories to help you prioritize more easily.

1. The Essentials

These are your cleaning besties! If you’re going to buy anything, make it these. And I’d recommend getting them in bulk sizes because you’ll use them A LOT.

• Baking soda: Bulk size is $25.99 on Amazon.
• Distilled white vinegar: Buy at the supermarket or it’s $5.49 on Amazon.
• Liquid Castile Soap**: Hard to find at the supermarket. The bulk size is $49.95 on Amazon.

** The harvesting of palm oil often leads to the devastation of rainforests and slaughtering of the orangutan who live there. Please aim for a Castile soap that is free from palm oil or uses palm oil that’s been ethically harvested.

2. Optional Ingredients

These ingredients are great to have on hand, but you may or may not need them. For instance, if your home is full of wood, the olive oil is probably a good buy. Or if you constantly battle mold, you may want a much larger bottle of hydrogen peroxide than the spray I link to below (easy to find on Amazon).

Otherwise, if you’re on a tight budget, maybe hold off on these ingredients until you run out of the cleaners you already have and have to replace them anyway.

• Hydrogen peroxide: Buy this natural mold killer at the supermarket or drugstore. Or this spray bottle is $5.98 on Amazon.
• Corn starch: Makes glass cleaner streak-free. Buy at the supermarket or (if you’ll also use it for organic baking) this one is $10 on Amazon.
• Olive oil: Depending on how much wood you have in your home, you might choose a smaller and less expensive bottle of olive oil (a natural wood conditioner) at the supermarket. Or this larger 50-ounce (1.5 quart) bottle is $16.87 on Amazon.
• Witch hazel: I combine witch hazel with essential oils to make deodorizing sprays. You can buy it for less at the supermarket or drugstore. This fancier version is $11.95 on Amazon. 

3. Laundry

You’ll love washing your laundry with soapnuts and softening it using wool dryer balls. They’re inexpensive over time since you can reuse them over and over, but they are a small investment upfront. So if you’re on a tight budget, consider holding off on these natural laundry products until you’re ready to replace those you already have. (You’ll also learn to make a liquid detergent using the “essential ingredients” above.)

• Soapnuts: Replaces several bottles of laundry detergent. This one is $16.95 on Amazon.
• Wool dryer balls: Replaces roughly 2,000 dryer sheets. This 6pk is $23.95 on Amazon.
• Oxygen bleach: Buy at the supermarket or this 2-pack is $16.91 on Amazon.

4. Cleaning Supplies

You can probably get away with not buying anything on this list, except maybe the spray bottles.

• Spray bottles: Find plastic bottles** at the dollar store. Or this 8-pack of glass comes in 4 sizes for $18.99 on Amazon.
• Glass jars: Empty tomato sauce or olive jars are great for this purpose. This 6-pack of mason jars is $16.99 on Amazon.
• Funnels: Go funnel-free, if you don’t mind a small mess (Just be sure to pour your ingredients over the sink.) Or grab these for $8.99 on Amazon.
• Cleaning rags: Cut up an old towel or some old t-shirts. Or these are $19.95 on Amazon.
• Scrub pads: Use whatever you’ve already got at home. Or these are $6.87 on Amazon.
• Bucket: Honestly, I just use the kitchen sink. But this one is $10.43 on Amazon.

** Please do NOT reuse spray bottles from your old commercial cleaners, as this can be dangerous.

5. Essential Oils (optional)

I love using essential oils (“EOs”) in my cleaning and laundry products but, unlike the other natural ingredients, these aren’t cheap. If you’re on a budget, you might start with just one or two of your favorites (or none at all).

If it helps you to choose, I’m obsessed with clove and/or peppermint to freshen the air in my home and I tend to use lavender the most in my DIY cleaners. (I probably use tea tree or rosemary the second-most.)

EOs are not appropriate for those who have become sensitive to them. (We’ll talk about why that happens in the EO lesson, as well as how to buy and use EOs safely.)

This page contains affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps to subsidize the low price of this course. Thanks!

The clever marketing of commercial cleaners

When I was a kid, I remember having all the well-marketed cleaning products under our kitchen sink. Even today, years after switching to natural cleaners, I can see why folks buy them.

Who doesn’t want to protect their family from germs or ‘Snuggle’ up for some cozy family time? These feel-good ads tell me that greasy messes can disappear like magic and I’ll find bliss in their fresh scents.

Who wouldn’t want that?!

And while the ads never seem to mention how they achieve these amazing feats, they often include kids and cute puppies. So surely their products must be safe, right?

Trustworthy celebrities use these products too… sometimes with kids AND while pregnant. With a reputation and their kids at stake, obviously they would know better than to promote harmful products!?

And yet… I wouldn’t use any of these cleaners.

Yes, they soften laundry, cut grease, and kill germs as they claim. But their superpowers come at a cost I’m not willing to pay.

We’ll learn more about safety ratings throughout the course but, for now, click any of the letter-grade ratings below if you’re curious to see why a product has earned a particular score.

Thankfully, there are plenty of healthier alternatives that are just as effective. With that in mind, let’s take a quick peek at:

• The harmful ingredients to avoid in cleaning products
• And common natural alternatives

After that, we’ll jump into our first bit of healthy cleaning!

How to Recognize & Avoid the Marketing Hype

Before we jump into some of the common tricks employed by marketers, let’s take a look at a few of the all-too-common ingredients in cleaning products that you’ll want to avoid.

Chlorine Bleach & Ammonia

As far as household cleaners go, chlorine bleach and ammonia (separately**) tend to be the biggest offenders. Well-marketed supermarket cleaners often contain one or the other, yet both are toxic.

The strong fumes can burn your eyes and lungs, trigger asthma attacks, and cause long-term damage with repeated exposure. These ingredients are particularly harmful to kids and pets, as the fumes are more concentrated in their small lungs.

** You’ll never see bleach + ammonia in the same cleaner, as combining them can be lethal. Please, don’t ever combine them at home either.

.

Fragrance

Lurking behind this single, innocent-sounding word is a concoction of dozens (sometimes thousands!!) of synthetic chemicals… none of which are required to be disclosed by the manufacturer. Why? Because the “fragrance” recipe is considered a trade secret.

Ridiculous, I know.

Fragrance is a known skin and respiratory irritant and is a serious trigger for those with an acute sensitivity to chemicals. And here’s the kicker. You’ll often find it in popular “green” cleaners, as well.

Hard-to-recognize ingredients

I’m always wary of unrecognizable ingredients that make me wish I’d paid more attention in chemistry class. Of course, there are plenty of lab-made chemicals that are safe (e.g., sodium bicarbonate is harmless baking soda) — as well as plenty of naturally occurring chemicals that are toxic (e.g., sulfuric acid).

Again, we’ll learn to use the online tool you saw earlier to easily look up the safety ratings of cleaning products and their ingredients. But if you’re unsure of a product’s safety (and you’re like me and couldn’t be bothered to check the safety database while you’re in the store), err on the side of caution and consider putting the product back on the shelf.

Ingredients are often not listed at all

Perhaps unsurprisingly, you’ll usually find that supermarket cleaners don’t list their ingredients at all. Makes sense. I mean, if I wanted to sell a harmful product, I wouldn’t list what’s in it either.

With that in mind, if I don’t see the ingredients listed on the product (or at the very least, if I can’t easily find them on their website), I put it back on the shelf. Full stop.

Gee, if only there was a little extra space to print the ingredients! 🙄

Call for ingredients? Sure, I don’t have anything better to do with my day. I’ll get right on that!

Vague marketing claims

Sometimes you’ll find vague descriptions that really make the product look healthy. And yet these descriptors don’t actually mean anything. I often see that with cleaners pretending to be green.

The wording you’ll see might include: **

• ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ ingredients
• ‘plant-derived’ or ‘plant-based’ ingredients
• ‘biodegradable’ or ‘earth-friendly’ ingredients
• ‘non-toxic’ or ‘toxin-free’ ingredients

** Many terms found on cleaning product labels are not legally defined or regulated, so marketers are free to use them however they wish. Some brands use the terms responsibly and others do not, so don’t rely on the front label alone. Always check to see what’s inside!

Actual ingredients in Purclean include:

• Sodium laureth sulfate: irritant & possible system toxicity (source)
• Propylene glycol: irritant & possible system toxicity (source)
• Laureth-9: possible contamination from ethylene oxide & 1,4-dioxane (source)
• Sodium hydroxide: irritant & possible system toxicity (source)

No thanks, Tide!!

TRY IT: White vinegar as an everyday spray cleaner

Plain ol’ white vinegar is an effective alternative to bleach and ammonia. It kills nearly all household germs and it’s highly economical. The fumes can be bothersome at first, but they are not harmful and they dissipate quickly. Vinegar is also completely safe to use around children and pets.

Later, we’ll add white vinegar to our recipes to disinfect counters, clean glass, soften laundry, and more. But for now, let’s give it a try on its own, so you can see how easy and effective it is for everyday cleaning.

TRY IT: Baking soda as a natural scrubbing powder

You’re probably aware that baking soda is an effective deodorizer for everything from sneakers to freezers. But did you know that it is also highly effective as a scouring powder?

Yep. It’s “no-scratch”, so it’s safe to use on dishes, cookware, counters, sinks, tubs, ovens, and other hard surfaces around your home.

You can also use it in the laundry to boost the effectiveness of your detergent. (Side benefit: Using it in the laundry also helps to keep the pipes clean.)

We’ll learn a few baking soda recipes throughout the course. For now, let’s just try scrubbing the sink with it, so you can see how well it works even on its own.

I make my own charcoal-based toothpaste with coconut oil, which really clings to the sink! So I keep a jar of baking soda in the cabinet below the sink and sprinkle it on every 2 or 3 days. (We’ll learn to make a charcoal toothpaste and a charcoal toothpowder in the Detox Your Morning Routine course.)

p.s. Below is my bathroom sink. I swear, I never let the sink get THIS dirty! I let it go several extra days without a cleaning, so I could get this exaggerated image for the course. 😆

How to find safety ratings + healthy alternatives

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has an easy-to-use search tool that helps you find the safety ratings for more than 2,500 cleaning products, as well as the individual ingredients they contain.

Their scientists use a variety of resources to grade the products and ingredients on a scale from A (low-hazard) to F (high-hazard).

You can type just about anything into the search bar. For example:

• A brand: Lysol, Clorox, Method, Seventh Generation, etc.
• A product: Lysol wipes, Ecos laundry detergent, etc.
• An ingredient: Chlorine bleach, fragrance, sodium bicarbonate, etc.

Let’s look at Lysol as a quick example

1. How does Lysol fare overall as a brand?
2. Which products are more/less hazardous?
3. Are there particular ingredients that concern you more than others?

Here’s that link again, if you want to give it a try. Otherwise, here’s what it’ll look like…

Click the “Brands” button

The search results will list ALL of Lysol’s products right off the bat. But sometimes I like to click the BRANDS button to see a high-level overview first…

Notice that you’ll see Lysol’s overall product ratings at the top:

We can see that Lysol actually has a few products that score As and Bs. That’s great! And a bit surprising, if I’m being honest. Maybe they’re evolving? I hope so. Still, I reserve the right to remain skeptical. 😉

** Brands create new products all the time and it takes a lot of work to keep up with the new safety ratings. With that in mind, I doubt this list includes ALL of Lysol’s products and it’s possible that a few of these are now discontinued. Still, I think EWG has done a pretty good job.

Check out the products

Below are several of the products that are included. (There were 88 products, so I just pasted the first and last pages for context.) This partial list below should give you a good idea of what you’d see as you scroll through the initial search results. Pretty simple, right?

……

What about the ingredients?

If you click on their Disinfecting Wipes, you’ll see that you get a quick summary of concerns at the top.

Scroll down and you’ll see the individual ingredients, as well as the details that help to explain those overall concerns in the summary section.

For example, ammonium chloride (see below) and whatever that 2nd ingredient is are both associated with possible “developmental/ endocrine/ reproductive effects”. Yikes! Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to have around the house, especially if you’re pregnant or have small children or elders in the house!

Disinfectants are important, especially these days, right? But the tradeoff here seems to be toxins such as these that can harm our organs and vital systems…or a virus such as the flu or COVID. Awesome. 😖

Thankfully, there are natural options. But here’s the thing…

A lot of green websites will tell you that hydrogen peroxide and white vinegar** (separately, please!) are highly effective at killing a myriad of harmful germs.

And they’d be right! Except that the flu virus isn’t one of them. (And I suspect vinegar isn’t a match for the coronavirus either, though I’m not sure that’s been specifically tested as of yet.)

There are ‘green’ cleaners and then there are green cleaners

When I first started transitioning to healthier cleaning products, I’d buy brands like Method, Mrs. Meyers, and Seventh Generation. The claims on the packaging sound convincing. Plus, they sell them at places like Whole Foods, so they’ve gotta be healthy, right?

Sometimes!

But I bought it at Whole Foods!

It turns out that even if you buy your cleaning products from healthier supermarkets or green living websites, you still need to check to see what’s inside.

Most ‘green’ cleaning products will list their ingredients on the label — or at least on the individual product pages on their website. But not always.

Of course, you can look up the ingredients on EWG just like you can the commercial cleaners. And I recommend you do just that, as you may be surprised by what you find.

Each of the above brands has well-rated products that I would use – and have used. And yet each of the brands also has cleaners with poor safety ratings as well. 

For example…

Seventh Generation was probably the biggest surprise for me.

One of their D-rated products is a baby detergent (ingredients/ratings), if you can believe it! To be fair, they do have a slightly better version for babies (ingredients/ratings), which gets a grade of ‘C’. The C isn’t terrible but given that it’s marketed for sensitive skin AND it’s for babies AND it’s Seventh Generation, I would have thought they’d do better.

The moral of the story is to always check the ingredients even if…

• a cleaner has a natural-looking label with ‘green’ claims,
• you can buy it at Whole Foods,
• a green blogger is promoting it on Instagram,
• or it has a high overall rating on EWG

How do essential oils affect a product’s safety rating?

As you start looking at the ratings for green cleaners that contain essential oils, you’ll notice that, so long as the other ingredients are safe, a low-rated essential oil won’t usually affect the overall score for the product.

As mentioned earlier, it would depend on how strong the oil is and how much it contributes overall to the product’s toxicity. I have yet to find a case where EWG’s score seemed to be adversely affected by essential oils, even when there are several of them and they are all rated a C, D, or F.

Still, even well-rated cleaners with essential oils may not be appropriate for everyone.

Why?

Essential oils are controversial in the healthy living community.

It was interesting — from the countless (and often heated) Reddit and Facebook threads I’ve read over the years — to learn how polarizing essential oils can be. 

• Those who love EOs (I’m one of them) often rely on them as a natural alternative to improve their health.
• Meanwhile, there are others who are highly sensitive to EOs and feel they are as dangerous as their synthetic ‘fragrance’ counterparts.

Honestly, both sides are right.

Essential oils are powerful extracts, so you have to use them with care. The same essential oils that can benefit one user can trigger allergies or sensitivities in another.

We’ll discuss in-depth about how and why this happens in a later lesson dedicated to essential oils. For now, I’ll just say that it’s up to you to decide whether to use or avoid cleaning products that contain them.

You’ve already seen the health ratings for quite a few popular cleaners along with the details behind their scores. In this lesson, you’ll see a few simple charts that show ratings AND prices, so you can quickly see what you’d pay for cleaners in each category: supermarket vs. ‘green’ vs. DIY.

Please note that each of the brands you see on the Supermarket chart and the Green Cleaners chart (including Clorox) has products that do rate well. The fact that brands can garner both very high and very low ratings (again) underscores the main theme of this course:

Please don’t ever assume that a product is safe just because the label says so, or the brand has a good reputation, or because you found it at Whole Foods. Always check to see what’s inside!

** NOTES

• With more effort, I probably could have found more green cleaners priced roughly the same as the supermarket cleaners.
• I also tried to find bulk sizes where possible (but didn’t always succeed), in order to be fair when comparing supermarket and green cleaners to DIY prices.
• I used Amazon to choose the product sizes and to find pricing since it’s the one place you can find everything.

The above chart contains affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps to cover the discounted class prices, as well as the research costs over at greenopedia.com

EXERCISE: What’s Under Your Sink?

It’s time to ditch those toxins for good!! Are you ready? In this lesson, we’ll focus on your kitchen and bathroom cleaners. (We’ll look at your other cleaners within the Bedroom & Living Areas lesson and the Laundry lesson.)

1. If you want to jot down your results, open this Google spreadsheet. and make a copy by simply going to the File menu and clicking Make a Copy. Done! You now have your own copy that you can play around with (fill it in, change the fonts & colors) however you like.
2. Next, use the EWG search tool to:
   • Assess the cleaners you use most **
   • Decide which to keep vs. ditch
   • Decide to make vs. buy a replacement, if needed

** There’s really no reason to rate every single cleaner you own. This exercise is mainly to decide what to keep or ditch and you’ll get the picture pretty quickly!

IMPORTANT: Before you ditch those toxins…

You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that many supermarket cleaners are considered hazardous household waste. That means any leftover cleaners labeled as poisonous, toxic, corrosive, flammable, combustible, or irritant cannot be rinsed down the drain or poured onto the ground. And any non-empty containers cannot be tossed into the trash bin.

Instead, these items must be taken to your local hazardous waste facility. Many cities also offer convenient pickup services a few times a year.

Did you find cleaners you want to replace? Great! Let’s look at a few recipes that can help.

TRY IT: Simple Dish Soap

Simple castile soap is made by saponifying (‘making soap from’) oils. Traditionally, castile soap was made from olive oil, but these days brands often add coconut and/or other oils as well.

Both are great. Just please be sure to buy castile soap that is free from palm oil or made with palm oil that has been sustainably harvested. The harvesting of most palm oil is highly destructive to the rain forests and often involves horrible cruelty for the orangutan that live there.

You’ll find castile soap as an ingredient in countless natural cleaning and body recipes online — and in this course. But I often use it entirely by itself (or diluted in a bit of water) for washing my dishes… as well as a handwash on my bathroom sink.

Natural cleaners in the bedroom & living areas

Let’s start this lesson with a quick price and rating comparison, just like we did in the kitchen & bath lesson. You can easily find green cleaners with better ratings than these, using the EWG tool. Or you can make your own. Check the ingredients on the 3rd slide below to see what you’d need.

EXERCISE: What’s under your sink?

Remember the worksheet you used to assess your kitchen and bathroom cleaners in a previous lesson? Go ahead and open it — as well as the EWG database — to assess the cleaning products you use for the bedroom and living areas.

(Here’s the original worksheet, if you didn’t make a copy for yourself in the kitchen & bath lesson. Just go to the File menu and click “make a copy” so that you can add your cleaners and ratings.)

Once you’re done assessing your cleaners, click over to the next lesson to make an easy and all-natural furniture dusting spray.

The incredible power of essential oils

Essential oils have been used for aromatic and therapeutic benefits since ancient times.  But as we briefly discussed in an earlier lesson, they are a controversial ingredient today.

Some folks tout their benefits and rely on essential oils as a natural alternative to improve their health. Meanwhile, others have developed a serious sensitivity to them and argue they are dangerous.

Here’s the thing.

Essential oils are powerful plant extracts, so their quality and proper use cannot be overstated.

The amazing aromas and benefits of essential oils are derived from the naturally occurring chemical compounds within them. It can take thousands of plants to extract a single ounce… and that’s nothing to mess around with.

Natural as they may be, these aromatic chemicals are highly concentrated and it’s important to use them with caution. The same compounds that benefit some users can trigger skin rashes and other allergic reactions for others.

When you’re trying a new product that contains essential oils (whether it’s a cleaning product or body care), be sure to only use a small amount at first to make sure you don’t experience a reaction.

How we can develop or experience a sensitivity to an essential oil.

There are 5 things to consider.

1. Not diluting a strong EO enough

You become sensitive to an essential oil if you do not properly dilute it. Worse yet, by not properly diluting that essential oil, you can also become sensitive to other EOs that share a similar chemical profile.

2. Synthetic additives

It can take thousands of plants to extract a small amount of essential oil, which is expensive. To lower their cost, some brands will add synthetic fragrances to their oils. These additives can trigger skin or respiratory reactions for some users.

3. Contaminants

Pesticides and other soil or manufacturing contaminants can make their way into the essential oil, which can also trigger a reaction.

4. Natural salicylates

Some oils contain natural salicylates, which protect the plant from bacteria and insects. If you cannot tolerate aspirin, you may not be able to tolerate these EOs. Note that birch & wintergreen contain the highest concentration of salicylates. Ylang ylang and some clove oils can contain trace amounts.

5. Extraction method

Most EOs are extracted through steam distillation. But some extra delicate flowers (e.g., vanilla and jasmine) cannot withstand the heat and are extracted using either CO2 (preferred) or chemicals (not my choice).

• Carbon dioxide (CO2) is chemical-free. However, it is expensive and, therefore, less commonly used to extract the essential oils from the plants.
• Chemical solvents such as hexane, petroleum, or ethanol (the least expensive and most common). Up to 5% of the solvent may remain in the final product, so folks who are sensitive to even small amounts of these chemicals can experience a reaction.

Bottom line

Always use essential oils responsibly and choose quality oils from trusted brands who source and manufacture their products responsibly.

To ensure quality, check that the oil has been independently tested for purity and consistency. Brands who are confident in their products and properly test them are more than happy to share the results on their website.

MAKE IT: Room freshener spray

I never quite understood how Febreze, Glade plugins, and similar products earned the name air (or room) “fresheners”. They just smell like chemicals to me and there’s nothing “fresh” about that.

Also, I can actually taste them when I breathe them in. Does that happen to you too? So gross. 

Here’s a better alternative.

MAKE IT: Bathroom detox spray

Spray this mixture in the toilet before you sit down and it’ll prevent a lot of the stink, to begin with. Spray it after (away from your face) to clear the odors that do escape.

Mother Nature’s Laundry Ingredients

I used to associate the smell of fresh laundry with the fragrance in my detergent or fabric softener. Or if I’d just washed my whites, then it was the smell of bleach that assured me everything was as clean as it could get.

Today, that’s the opposite of what I think. Now I associate the smell of fresh laundry with no scent at all.

Think about it: if you can smell the detergent, bleach or softener, then it’s still lingering on your clothing, sheets, and towels… which means it’s laying against your skin.

No thanks!

Let’s take a look at some of Mother Nature’s alternatives.

Natural Soap Nuts

Soapnuts grow on trees! The sapindus mukorossi (soapberry) tree in the Himalayas, to be exact. Their shells contain a natural soap, called saponin, which is released when the berries are swished around in the washing machine (you’ll see a video of this on the next page). And as a long-time user, I can tell you… yes, they are effective at cleaning laundry!!

Wool Dryer Balls

I’ve been using wool dryer balls to soften my laundry for as long as I’ve been using soap nuts to wash it. Which is to say, I’ve been using both for several years now. And I love them. They’re made from 100% wool, usually from New Zealand.

The Sun

The sun is the best bleach around — even better than natural oxygen bleach. That said, drying laundry in the sun is a bit more work since you have to hang everything wet and set a timer to make sure nothing sits out longer than needed. That’s because the sun can actually weaken some fabrics if they’re left to dry too long. If you don’t have a yard or balcony, a sunny window will do.

How to soften laundry with wool dryer balls

Wool dryer balls may seem expensive at first when compared to a box of dryer sheets or a bottle of liquid softener. But they last dozens of loads, so you actually save quite a bit.

They also reduce static and pet hair on your clothing, as well as help the laundry to dry faster, which saves on the energy bill.

How to whiten laundry without chlorine-bleach

Whiten your laundry with oxygen bleach (chlorine-free)

• Sprinkle 2 Tbsp of oxygen bleach into the washer, alongside your detergent.
• Add your laundry and wash as usual.

Let the sun whiten your laundry

• Fabrics whiten better in the sun when they are wet, so wash or wet the items first, then hang them on a clothesline or drying rack.
• Straighten any wrinkles as best you can, so the sun hits everything evenly.
• Only keep your laundry in the sun for 2-3 hours at a time, as leaving them too long can weaken the fabric.
• Especially dingy clothing or dark stains may require another sun-soak or two before fully whitening.

TRY IT: Garbage disposal freshener

I use this hack whenever I’ve left a cut lemon in the fridge for too long. The slices can become dehydrated and unappealing to squeeze into my salad, but that doesn’t mean they have to go to waste!