It's easy being green.

So what if I stole my title from Bethany's photo album on facebook- I like it :)

The truth is that it IS easy (and cheap) to be green. My newest obession is soap nuts and they are both cheap and easy to use. These things are amazing. They are the dried fruit of the soap nut tree and they contain a substance called saponin. This magical saponin cleans things: everything to be exact.

The first thing I did was throw 6 nuts into the muslin bag provided and wash my laundry as normal. (It was just my sheets so I didn't really care how they came out.) They came out clean but there was no smell which I found highly unnerving so I went for a walk and bought some lemongrass essential oil. I then learned all about grinding soap nuts into a powder and putting them into a sock with the essential oils. I also added 2T of vinegar and 2T of baking soda to the drawer. My clothes came out AMAZINGLY clean and smelled nice too. The soap nuts even got the nappies clean and soft!! yay! :)

The next thing I decided to do was to make the soap nut liquid. You take 15 or so soap nuts and boil them in a litre of water for 30 minutes or so (I use spring water as I have yucky hard water which ruins everything). You then strain the soap nuts and are left with a golden soapy liquid! This can be used to clean your surfaces, be made into a shampoo or hand soap. My only issue is that I like suds and this liquid doesn't sud. Therefore, I am going to buy a foaming soap pump for my shampoo and hand soap. I must say that the liquid got my hair much cleaner than the baking soda fiasco from a few weeks ago! I also froze a lot of the liquid into cubes that I will be able to use as laundry detergent. I simply pop 3-4 cubes into the drum and then add my vinegar and baking soda combination!

My other "green" obsession is coconut oil. This needs to be the refined coconut oil. It is a but pricy but you can use it for EVERYTHING. I use it as my moisturiser (it smells AMAZING) and I have made toothpaste out of it. (Coconut oil + baking soda + peppermint oil = toothpaste!) I also cook with and eat the coconut oil. It tastes amazing when I make chicken korma. I throw two tablespoons into my smoothies to make it creamy and coconutty! It's awesome. It is supposed to help you lose weight as well so it's a win-win situation!

So at the moment, the only chemicals I use are the ones in my makeup and I use that sparingly. I need to find some good, chemical free makeup. Does anyone have any suggestions??

update

So apparently no poo + hard water = HELL for your hair. UGH. Stupid hard water!!!! So, I am ordering some soap nuts and am going to make shampoo out of that. Now I am waiting for them to arrive. I am still no poo on everything else but the shampoo and conditioner. They are both JASON which I thought was super great since there is no sodium laureth sulfate but on Skin Deep it got a 6 which is pretty hazardous. UGH.

I will update when I get my soap nuts. I plan on using them for EVERYTHING :).