Friday, August 20, 2010

Soap Nuts

Soap Nuts come from a soap nut tree and are actually an alternative to soap when washing your clothes. I have not personally tried them, but if you google them, you may want to check them out.

One of our readers, Kim, is trying them out right now and will keep me posted. So far, she says , "The soap nuts work OK, but they are a pain to use. Our water is so hard that I have to boil the berries to get the soap out and add salt to the water. I may try grinding them up and see how that goes."

Friday, April 23, 2010

Make your own laundry detergent

There are many sites on the web that explain how to make your own laundry detergent. Here is just one example.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Our coconut allergic friend, Heather says uses the Grandma's Lye soap. The great news is, people save a ton of money when they do it!

More soaps! Yay!

Attention coconut allergic readers, there are more soaps out there for us than I had posted long ago.

You may want to try these:

In the baby aisle of your supermarket:
Burt's Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk Soap

At various country stores, and even Ace Hardware:

Grandma's Lye Soap
Please don't pay more than $4 for it ;-)

At whole foods, sunflower market, and many other grocery stores:
Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap

I recently stayed at a Renaissance Hotel and discovered Aveda soaps that I am not allergic to. Little did I know how much they cost or I would have taken them home with me!
Aveda Rosemary Mint Bath Bar

Bella Vado Avocado Bar Soap.  Comes in several scents and unscented! This comes highly recommended by our reader Doug.

There are several others with palm instead of coconut oil in them that may work perfectly fine for you. You can even use them as shampoo if you can't find a shampoo that works for you.
Yes, soap can be your friend!
Oh, and by the way, none of these companies has ever contacted me to promote their coconut free product. LOL. As if they would need promoting.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Orange Juice with Traces of Coconut?


This is a new one for me. My orange juice may have some coconut in it? Why? How? When did this happen and is it a new cross contamination or just newly labeled? Anyway, this is the generic Walmart "Great Value" OJ. I'm not a big OJ drinker, but we have it in our house nonetheless. Look out, super coconut-sensitive people. But, hey, it's gluten free ::giggles::.