DIY -- castile soap

No, I haven't started making my own lye soap.
I just want to give the advantages of castile soap more air time.
First, there's no sodium, boron, or phosphates in it.
That's good for the health of our soil and water.
Second, you can't accidentally make hydrochloric acid with it, but you can use it with thyme tea as a disinfectant.
Third, you can clean your bathroom with it, mixing in baking soda when you need to scrub
BUT if you accidentally touch your clothes, it won't leave bleach spots.
That's one of my favorites among all the advantages.

Fourth, it gets out cooking oil better than normal detergents.
I've been  using it to wash dishes for a year now and one of the biggest problems has always been those yellow spots from cooking oil infused with turmeric.
Don't have that problem with castile soap.  It cuts the grease better and that means the turmeric yellow goes away.
Same thing happens with clothing.  When I splash the infused oil  on them, if I scrub them with a little castile soap, the spots go away.
I've tried using oxy-bleach for that; it doesn't make them go away, it turns them a nice bright purple.
Interesting bit of chemistry that must be.

I'm using castile soap for hand-wash and it doesn't bleach my hand made knits.
It's fine on cotton blends.
It's fine on wool.
It's fine on linen.
And that's all I care about, since I stopped using rayon because I was tired of it not washing well.
And I don't wear much lycra or spandex.
If you could see me you would understand that I'm doing everybody a  benefit by not wearing those.

And in a pinch, I use it for shampoo instead of my normal yucca-plus herbal blend.

If I catch all the water I use castile soap in, I can put it on my garden with no qualms.
You can't say that for detergents; the sodium or boron in them is bad for the soil.

Think about  it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved