Clean your clothes without detergent

[judyofthewoods]

A slight diversion from the subject, but related - not heard about vinegar for washing laundry as such, but aparently odours are either alcaline or acid in nature, and if you want to get rid of them (including on garments) you use vinegar to nutralise alcaline smells and bicarb for acid odours. If its not obvious what they are it would require experimentation. It would be obvious in the case of e.g. sick, but can't think where else it would be. I did try it on synthetic perfumes on clothes, washing them in both bicarb and vinegar, but it did not work, so probably only on natural smells.

[Wombat]

The idea that all smells are alkaline or acid (to an old chemist like me ) sounds like an urban myth (ie crap! ). Perfumes and essential oils are pretty smelly and they tend to be long chain hydrocarbons such as esters, ketones and aldehydes for which the acid/alkaline thing doesn't work.

When you wash your clothes, you want to get rid of two type of soiling - water soluble (hydrophilic) and fat soluble (lipophilic) . The water soluble stuff comes off straight in the water (no problem) but the fat soluble stuff doesn't. Thats why you put a mixture of surface active agents (surfactants) and alkaline builders in to the wash to get it clean. The surfactants help the water to "wet" out the fat soluble stuff and emulsify it. The alkaline builders help to turn the fatty stuff into soap (which is water dispersible). bingo, there goes your dirty clothes . It would be interesting to see how the vinegar would work, but for low impact cleaning I would have thought that washing soda (sodium carbonate) which is mildly alkaline, would work better.

Nev

[realwildchild]

Nev,

Is washing soda really low impact? I have always steered clear of it as it has all these dire warnings about washing hands, not inhaleling etc etc on the pack (although thinking about it, I tend to avoid inhaleing Ecover! )

Have not heard of using vinegar to wash with, maybe there is some more testing to be done this week.

[judyofthewoods]

Washing soda is a strongish alcaline, and can cause iritation in concentration, but as with acids, in dilution the corrosive/caustic effect is lessened somewhat, but still handle with care, just like any soap.
I suspected that the alcaine/acid claim about smell is not true, or at least does not apply to every smell. The river does however remove the most tennacious synthetic smells, and I suspect its the oxygen in the agitated water which reacts with the chemical producing the smell, and is carried away by the water. It requitres about two days in the river to rid them of any vestige of scent.
I would think that a lot of dirt is hydrophilic, and that agitation helps to move the water through the fibres and removes the dirt, but for garments which are worn next to the skin, like smalls and shirts, which pick up body oils, I like to use a small amount of soap to clean them. Whites go in first, then shirts into the same water, by which time the soap is somewhat exhausted, then the darks, which need the least amount of soap. If I was a mechanic with oily overalls, then they would get seperate strong soapy treatment. That's the layman's explenation.
Wombat, have you got any suggestion (short of an expensive ozonator, which may or may not work) for removing synthetic perfumes from washing powders in garments? The river works, but is a lot of hastle, and depends on how much rain we've had (it can quickly rise to a torrent). Hoping to find a more convenient method. One was to suspend a basket under my hydro tale race, but still a bit of hastle.

[Wombat]

RWC, that is a good question, washing soda puts sodium into the environment and rasies the pH of the water, but then any cleaning compound is likely to do something. But........if I remeber correctly you could make it yourself, there are no phosphates to cause eutrophication (algal blooms in waterways) and no colours, flavours, EDTA etc to pump inot the environment - at least you know what you are putting in!

Judy - yet it is quite alkaline, but less so compared to sodium metasilicate and some of the other detergent builders (or the sodium/potassium hydroxide that I used to work with ). Your comments about dirt/body oils makes sense to me. perhaps your use of soap could be reduced if you use a two stage process, a water rinse - then use the soap - dirt often contains calcium compounds, these react with the (sodium) commercial soaps to form insoluble calcium soaps which form a difficult to remove scum. As for the artificial fragrances - yeah - difficult, the obvious and difficult answer is to buy products without them. I heard years ago that they used to bleach clothes by putting them on the grass in the moonlight. This is not as stupid as it sounds, the moon did not bleach them but the oxygen released from plants (the grass) did. Maybe putting your clothes on the grass at night would allow the smells to be oxidised out - which sounds reasonable. may be worth a try anyway!

Nev

[Wombat]

BTW - what is Ecover?

[Andy Hamilton]

BTW - what is Ecover?

Ecover is the UK's most popular eco friendly cleaning company. They make washing powder, washing up liquid ect..

All stuff made from natural products and all that.

[judyofthewoods]

Wombat, I have tried the grass method, even had a cable that came out of a pub on the grass for several months, still as smelly. Had clothes on the line in sun, rain, wind for weeks and weeks, no good. Months do it, by which time the fibres rot. I buy second hand clothes, and try to remove the scent from previous owners. Even scent I pick up from sitting in someone elses chair. I find it so bad, that I have special going out clothes, and no one is allowed to sit on my chair, as the scent transfers. The river method seems the most reliable and speedy method so far, and I can only explain it with the amount of oxigen created in the rapid where I let the clothes drag on the end of a rope. Having developed such a sensitive sence of smell makes me realise how noxious the stuff is that goes into everyday products.

[Wombat]

Bummer!

I don't know of anything else, but will have a cast around and see if I can find anything. Wow, you must be very sensitive to these fragrances!

Nev

[realwildchild]

I think you get very sensitive to artificial fragrances very quickly when you stop using them.

Up until some years ago, before I actually gave a thought to the way I was living, I was a Procter & Gamble tart! I rushed out and bought the latest washing powder/liquid/tablets, all new fabric conditioner and as for the tumble drier sheets - how could one possibly live without a tumble drier or sheets to put into it? I had a favourate brand of fabric conditioner, loved it, and for me it was the smell of 'clean'. Now, it honestly makes me feel sick, I know someone who uses the same brand and it is so overpowering, it irritates my throat and makes me feel ill.

[judyofthewoods]

My friends and family think I am mad, I'm happy to see I'm vindicated. If I have to go into the detergent isle in the supermarket (rubbergloves and matches) I have to hold my breath and run. Even the next isle is unpleasant. I really stong whiff and I wretch. It just makes me wonder how much damage people are causing themselves (and the environment) by 24/7 exposure. Is there any connection with all the modern ailments, asthma, hyperactivity, cancer and many more, I wonder. People are constantly exposed to a toxic cloud. If you smell it, you are inhaling it.

[Andy Hamilton]

My friends and family think I am mad, I'm happy to see I'm vindicated. If I have to go into the detergent isle in the supermarket (rubbergloves and matches) I have to hold my breath and run. Even the next isle is unpleasant. I really stong whiff and I wretch. It just makes me wonder how much damage people are causing themselves (and the environment) by 24/7 exposure. Is there any connection with all the modern ailments, asthma, hyperactivity, cancer and many more, I wonder. People are constantly exposed to a toxic cloud. If you smell it, you are inhaling it.

I can say for certain that a link has been found between the use of air freshners and depression http://www.news-medical.net/?id=5680 to paraphrase from the above article - The researchers found that frequent use of air fresheners and aerosols during pregnancy and early childhood was associated with higher levels of diarrhoea, earache and other symptoms in infants, as well as headaches and depression in mothers.

[Wombat]

I had look at the Ecover website, and from my reading of it I suspect that they use sodium carbonate, sodium metasilicate builders like the rest, but instead of an oil derived surfactant (eg long chain ethoxylates) they use coconut oil soaps etc. So as everyone says, not perfect but better (environmentally ) than the competition.

I does worry me a bit when company's make a big noise over how much better they are when still using much the same raw materials. We have a "party plan" cosmetics company over here called "nutrimetics" who tout a natural image and I made the mistake of sitting in on a party.......the demonstrator told some whoppers about their competition ("commercial soap is made from the white residue left over from oil refining" simply untrue - soap is made from fatts/oils and caustic soda like it always was). I knew a guy who sold raw materials into the cosmetic industry and he said that nutrimetics buy the same as everyone else - not that the stuff that they bought was bad or unhealthy, just no different - false advertising for my money!

Nev

[judyofthewoods]

Ecover, like many other 'green' products, is just the lesser of the evals.

[PlayingWithFire]

Any suggestions for deoderising the clothes - which is often the reason for washing, not removing dirt, as such?

Hand washing soon reduces the frequency of my washing!

M