Laundry Basket

Here’s a few laundry tips. Please share any tips or tricks you may have on our blog and don’t forget to check back every once in a while.

Products	Problem	Solution
Borax, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, washing soda, or white vinegar	Stain removers and bleach alternatives.	Try soaking fabrics in water mixed with borax, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, washing soda, or white vinegar. Or, look for "non-chlorine bleach" made from sodium percarbonate or sodium perborate, available from Bio Pac, Ecover, Naturally Yours, Shaklee, Nature Clean or Seventh Generation. Tamey tried the Nature Clean Stain remover and it took the grass out of the kids pants!

Borax, baking soda or washing soda	Natural laundry detergents not getting the job done or want Brighten Whites?	Try adding a cup of borax, baking soda or washing soda to your wash load. This can reduce the amount of laundry detergent needed to clean a laundry load. This is a stample in Patti's laundry repertoire.

Lemon Juice	Lightly bleach	Adding ½ cup of lemon juice to the rinse cycle of a medium load of whites will lightly bleach the clothing. This technique is especially effective on clothes that are then hung to dry on the line.

White vinegar	Decided to stay with a conventional brand of laundry detergent but are concerned with ensuring all detergent is removed from clothes.	You can try adding 1 cup of white vinegar during the wash rinse cycle. This will help remove detergent completely from clothes, but not leave clothes with a vinegar odour.

White Vinegar	Hard Water	The minerals in hard water can gray clothes. If you have very hard water, add ½ cup of vinegar to your rinse water.

Fabric softener	Want a natural fabric softner.	Make your own by adding 1/4 cup of baking soda to the wash cycle. Adding 1/4 cup of white vinegar will also soften clothes, as well as eliminate static cling.

	Using too much energy when doing laundry.	Launder clothes on the warm or cold water setting for washing, and always use cold water to rinse clothes. Washing clothes in cold water can cut CO2 emissions down by 100 pounds and save you up to $64 a year on your energy bill. Hang your clothes out to dry. Clean your lint filter with every load.

	Alternative soaps.	Tamey uses Soap Nuts that are naturally organic. (Because bugs don't like to eat soap.) Their cultivation is earth-friendly and sustainable, which is in great contrast to the chemical production of laundry detergent. See Tamey's Product Review.

	Eliminating static cling in dryer, without using dryer sheets.	You can eliminate static cling in the dryer by drying natural-fiber clothes and synthetic-material clothes separately. Better still, line dry the synthetic clothing, as those materials tend to dry faster than cotton. Tamey uses dryer balls which last two years.