Soap Nuts

[Aggie]

Has anyone used soap nuts before? I bought a bag of them some time ago, and have decided to try them out as shampoo and possibly laundry detergent (I am out of the former and running low on the latter ).

To make the shampoo, I made a relatively concentrated solution by boiling 15 soap nuts in 3 cups of water, until the volume was reduced by about half.

I hand-crushed and am reboiling the softened nuts to get some more saponins out; I might try this for laundry (it's a bit more darkly tinted and stronger smelling, and will probably require filtering). For the laundry, I might add a little lemon oil for scent.

I've heard it's possible to throw the nuts directly in a muslin bag and into the washer, for washing clothes.

[Opsa]

What are these miraculous items you call soap nuts?

[Aggie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapindus

The ones I have are the Indian type and look like this:


Related species are native to North America.


I paid $4 for a bag of 50 or so at a South Asian grocery store, so if this makes a satisfactory natural shampoo, it'll be a very economical one as well.

[Opsa]

They sound amazing! (Oh carp, I sound like some sort of TV ad show.)

I wish I could grow the tree.

Where did you find them?

[Swatopluk]

Aren't these things poisonous when ingested? Or do I confuse them with soaproot that was used similarily and actually gave us the term soap?

[Aggie]

Saponins tend to be poisonous, but then again, so is drinking detergent. They're quite toxic to fish, in particular, but common in many plants.

In humans, the main concern is ingestion, and most of the symptoms from that are gastrointestinal in small doses.

[Sibling DavidH]

Never heard of them.  When I read the thread title, I thought it was instructions on how to use the shower. 

[Darlica]

I found this, I might be of interest for you Opsa. 

http://exeterra.blogspot.se/2007/08/how-to-grow-soap-nut-trees.html

[Aggie]

They are related to lychees, which are easy to grow from seed, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was possible.  All the nuts I had were whole, and included seeds.

I'm not sure yet how the shampoo is working out; it's a little hard to figure out how much to use, as it's a non-viscous liquid and is harder to handle than shampoo.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

They are related to lychees, which are easy to grow from seed, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was possible.  All the nuts I had were whole, and included seeds.

I'm not sure yet how the shampoo is working out; it's a little hard to figure out how much to use, as it's a non-viscous liquid and is harder to handle than shampoo.

Try putting it into a squeeze bottle (like a plastic ketchup bottle) for more control.

If that's still too little control, if the liquid is thin, try one of those spritzer/spray bottles (use a fine mesh filter to keep particulates out, in this case-- coffee filters work well here).

[Aggie]

The best thing I've found so far is to shake up the bottle it's in (a plastic shampoo bottle, which is squeezable) and squeeze out some of the resulting foam.  The problem with this technique is that very little actual liquid is dispensed, but at least the foam is manageable.  The tricky bit is getting the liquid from bottle to hand to head and distributing it through my hair evenly, as it doesn't have a distinctly soapy feel to the degree that good ol' SLS does. With respect to the foam technique, my best bet would be to get a bottle with a foaming pump dispenser, which is used for some types of hand soap. My roommate has such a bottle, which I may be able to poach after the soap is gone.

The spray bottle would work quite well, since I could apply it directly to my hair and have some confidence that it was distributed.  There's practically nil particulate matter (I did use a coffee filter for the second batch I made, but the stuff made with the whole nuts didn't require it).

I do need to find a second container to keep small volumes in the shower; since it's a natural product, it needs to be refrigerated or it'll go bad.  It shouldn't be an issue to keep a few day's worth in the shower. There are some natural preservatives I could try if I wanted, but as it's cheap and easy to make a batch, why use anything?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

A wee bit o' natural vinegar will go a long ways as a preservative, and may well enhance the cleaning properties too-- when I was a kid, washing one's hair with vinegar was fairly common.

Same thing goes for salt-- if you live near the sea, seawater is a natural source of preservative too, and cheap enough.  Ordinary table salt would work as well-- not much needed, just a wee bit.

I've also heard of using lemon juice-- makes for a nice scent, and again, the acid lowers the pH which helps loosen the dirt/oils/etc within the hair.

Still another possibility:  make up a batch of real soap (like the Ivory brand allegedly is).  There are mountains of info on how to do that on the intertubes, and it's pretty easy.  Once you have some?  Break it into small particles, and drop a few into your squeeze bottle to dissolve.  Just a tiny-tiny bit, here, no reason to go overboard.   Once made, natural-sourced soaps last for years and years if you let it fully dry out.

Once you introduce a soap?  You can also consider adding natural lanolin, as from sheep's wool--- these are natural oils (that would need a soap-like molecule to dissolve into water) that are also reasonably anti-microbial as well.  And they are good for the skin-- as sheep evolved them to be good for their skin... 

It's an interesting project you are doing there, in any case.

[Aggie]

Salt is not entirely anti-microbial at reasonable concentrations; I'm going to make a batch of kimchi sometime soon, so I'm well acquainted with its properties for microbial control but not necessarily elimination. I use sea salt for that.

Lemon juice or powdered citric acid would be good options - or, why not ascorbic acid? It'd serve as an antioxidant as well as an anti-microbial.  pH drop is a good preservative, or at least a selective one; lactobacilli and their ilk are tolerant of it, but desirable (ayuh, kimchi again).

I have a bar of olive-oil based soap, with very few ingredients in it, which I've considered dissolving into liquid soap and/or shampoo.  It melts quite easily in the shower.  It's quite gentle stuff and might work for hair.  The water here is not particularly hard, so it's a possibility.  Soaps don't work as well for shampoos in hard water areas, as it'll drop out insoluble deposits of calcium and magnesium stearate on your hair and skin.  I've heard a bit of anecdotal evidence that the saponins don't cause this sort of buildup.