Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Latest in Green Ideas

There just do not seem to be enough hours in a day to get everything done that needs to be done! Obviously, a problem many of us have and the main reason I have gotten behind in posting on our blog. That said, I came across a couple of very interesting articles the other day, however the one that really caught my eye was one that said is Laundry Detergent Really Necessary?

The article started out pointing out that laundry detergent is a relatively new development and that for hundreds of years prior to that people were washing their clothes and you have to assume getting them clean at least to some degree. It continued talking about the extensive reasearch done on this subject and that the detergent is not the main factor in getting your clothes clean. The main factor in cleaning is the agitation of the clothes in the water. That is how people got them clean by rubbing them on rocks in the water and scrubbing them in moving stream water. The conclusion was that the detergent really isn't necessary to get your clothes clean as long as you put them in clean water and agitiate them around for a period of time. By not using the detergents you would not only save considerable money, but it also would be a much more green solution to cleaning your clothes.

However, if you are skeptical about this conclusion there is also another alternative and that is to use your current detergent but only use half of the amount that you would normally use and your clothes will get equally as clean! You can well imagine that I was definitely skeptical about this, so I tried it on the last couple of loads of laundry that I have done, and lo and behold it really does work! The clothes are just as clean as when I have used the regular amount of detergent, and no one else in the family has noticed any difference either!

So for another green solution that works, try using half of the amount of detergent in your next couple of loads of wash and see for yourself that it works just as well. You will not only be saving money by using that much less, it will also be good for the planet!!