Share your suggestions and ideas, and any other useful hints and tips you find online.
Here's a tip for doing laundry if you have any skin sensitivities or irritations or just want to avoid exposure to the cocktail of chemicals and fragrances found in almost all products (even those that call themselves 'sensitive').
1) Laundry Soap Without the Crap
Mix:
5% pure soda crystals (sodium carbonate)
5% pure liquid soap (the stuff without any additives, just water or glycerin, not the Dripak stuff with tetrasodium garbage and preservatives)
90% warm water
Shake well for one minute. It should form a fairly thick gel that pours like regular laundry liquid. If it separates over time, you may need to warm it again and shake hard.
As with regular laundry liquid, use a capful (30-60ml, depending on water hardness and dirt levels) for each full load of laundry; less for fewer items etc.
2) Enhanced Laundry Rinsing & Soap Removal
In the fabric conditioner/softener dispenser, don't use those smelly artificially fragranced poisons.
Instead, put in 2-3 heaped teaspoons of pure citric acid powder.
This will ensure that, during the rinse cycles, more of the soap is extracted/neutralized from the fabric fibres. This should reduce skin irritations or allergies caused from the chemical soup of volatile organics and alkaline soap residues in clothes/underwear, also by lowering the pH of the dried fabric closer to the skin's pH of 4-5, which inhibits the bacterial and fungal growth that can worsen body odor and skin fungal infections.
Neutralizing the fabric also has the effect of 'closing down' fabric fibres, so they tend to abrade and pill less in use and feel slightly smoother on the skin. It should also reduce the tendency of polyester/nylon/acrylic fibres to produce electrostatic.
Here's a tip for doing laundry if you have any skin sensitivities or irritations or just want to avoid exposure to the cocktail of chemicals and fragrances found in almost all products (even those that call themselves 'sensitive').
1) Laundry Soap Without the Crap
Mix:
5% pure soda crystals (sodium carbonate)
5% pure liquid soap (the stuff without any additives, just water or glycerin, not the Dripak stuff with tetrasodium garbage and preservatives)
90% warm water
Shake well for one minute. It should form a fairly thick gel that pours like regular laundry liquid. If it separates over time, you may need to warm it again and shake hard.
As with regular laundry liquid, use a capful (30-60ml, depending on water hardness and dirt levels) for each full load of laundry; less for fewer items etc.
2) Enhanced Laundry Rinsing & Soap Removal
In the fabric conditioner/softener dispenser, don't use those smelly artificially fragranced poisons.
Instead, put in 2-3 heaped teaspoons of pure citric acid powder.
This will ensure that, during the rinse cycles, more of the soap is extracted/neutralized from the fabric fibres. This should reduce skin irritations or allergies caused from the chemical soup of volatile organics and alkaline soap residues in clothes/underwear, also by lowering the pH of the dried fabric closer to the skin's pH of 4-5, which inhibits the bacterial and fungal growth that can worsen body odor and skin fungal infections.
Neutralizing the fabric also has the effect of 'closing down' fabric fibres, so they tend to abrade and pill less in use and feel slightly smoother on the skin. It should also reduce the tendency of polyester/nylon/acrylic fibres to produce electrostatic.