Laundry.

Laundry.

Laundry.

So. Much. Laundry.

Any of you other moms feel like laundry is a never-ending battle? I’ll admit, my strategy for laundry is not great and I usually let it pile up until the hamper is full and then have lots and lots of laundry to do. I do my laundry, our son’s laundry, the towels and sheets and my husband does his own laundry. I have always felt like laundry is personal. I know exactly what clothes of mine can go in the dryer, what clothes need to hang dry, what needs to go in hot, cold, etc. I can’t be responsible for that for him. Plus, he plays soccer and hockey and I have my limits.

Let’s talk about laundry detergent a little more. We use a lot of it. We probably use more than we should of it. It contains a lot of STUFF. Sometimes that stuff is helping to clean our clothes and sometimes it is just there to make us feel like our clothes are actually getting cleaner. Here was my criteria when I used to select a detergent: SMELL + PRICE. Easy enough. Eventually, I started to try and wisen up a little and purchase detergents without added fragrance. Fragrance is really just a fancy word an undisclosed amount of chemicals that make something smell good. When your clothes smell so good coming out of the laundry, you’re actually leaving a ton of residue and chemicals behind on your clothes.

Removing fragrance is definitely a step in the right direction and if you’re going to make 1 swap, I encourage you to at least choose a detergent that is fragrance free. As I’ve done more research, lot of the free & clear, gentle, hypoallergenic detergents still have a lot of that added STUFF in them. For example, All Free & Clear (my previous go to) ranks as a ‘D’ on EWG. I never would have suspected this. My hunt continued and I’ve finally found a detergent that gets the job done and is a cleaner, safer choice for our family.

My new criteria: better {safer} ingredients + less ingredients

I’ve been using [affiliate link] Charlie’s Soap this year and have been really happy with it. I actually feel like my clothes get clean, it lasts a very long time and I don’t feel or see any residue on my clothes. The ingredients are vegetable based and 100% derived from plants. At first, I was a little thrown off by the price. It’s currently sold for $17.99 for 100 loads and I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $10 on laundry detergent. It was a little tough to swallow spending that much. But, I just ordered by second bag and looked back to see that my first bag was ordered in December of 2018. It’s now August of 2019. You only use 2/3 of tablespoon for each load or 1 tablespoon for heavy duty loads. It really goes long way.

I’ve also used [affiliate link] Molly’s Suds in the past and was generally pretty happy with it as well. I prefer Charlie’s Soap over Molly’s Suds because I like it gets my clothes cleaner but it is a good alternative as well.

And, while I can’t change the copious amount of laundry you’re doing, I hope you’ll feel a little better about switching to a safer detergent!