Are you ready to swap out your traditional laundry products for non toxic alternatives?
Is this something you’ve tried before and find overwhelming, or has it never even crossed your mind?
Well either way – you’re in the right place and I’m glad you’re here!
If you’re not exactly sure what I’m talking about, and why you would even want to detox your laundry room, and swap your products for non toxic and clean ingredient alternatives, then feel free to check out this blog first!
Here’s my quick back story…back in 2020 I started doing some research, learned more about toxins in the home, and started swapping our my candles and cleaners (you can read about that here). Just a few months after I started that, I moved on to my laundry room.
It quickly became apparent to me that the laundry room was a huge toxin culprit in the home. Not only the amount of products…detergent, fabric softener, scent boosters, stain removers, dryer sheets, etc. But the amount of toxic ingredients in these products. Laundry products are essentially formulated to make a scent strong and long lasting, I mean that’s what everyone thinks they’re looking for, right?
But the chemicals that are used to accomplish that goal? Not good! Fragrance (umbrella term for a bunch of chemicals), phosphates, sulfates, petrochemicals, 2-butoxyethanol, NPEs, just to name a few – none of these chemicals are good for our health. And since they are in our laundry products (which are created to have long lasting scent), they are therefore constantly on our skin – between our clothes we wear, the towels we use, and the sheets we sleep on – it’s quite the exposure!
All that to say – once I started realizing that and learning more, swapping out my laundry products became a no-brainer. It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind when I started wanted to swap my cleaners, but in hindsight, it would have been an equally great place to start!
Anyway – shortly after I started swapping my candles and cleaners, I moved to the laundry room. First things first, I threw away my dryer sheets (a simple google search on this will tell you a lot) and exchanged them for wool dryer balls. Then I swapped my detergent. Then I started adding in other natural ingredients like baking soda, white vinegar, epsom salts, and high quality (essential oils).
And finally made the Stain Remover swap – I was most hesitant about this one because my son was about a year old at the time, and heaven knows we had a LOT of stained clothes! And in the 3.5 years (at the time of this blog!) that I have been using natural laundry products, including a safe ingredient stain remover, I think I’ve only faced one stain situation I wasn’t able to tackle (and at this point I have two little boys and that stain was dye related!).
So that’s just a little back story. And a little backstory as to why, once I started this process for myself, and after 3.5 years of trial and error, I decided to find an easy way to help others with this process!
And that brings me to my digital laundry guide “How to Detox Your Laundry Room.” You can read more about my digital products here, but in short, I wanted a way to be able to continually help people swap their laundry products for safer alternatives, and I wanted it to feel like I was in the laundry room with them!
Yes, I realize you could google a lot of these things. But not everyone wants to spend their time researching non-toxic laundry alternatives. But I did and I have. And I’ve been doing it since late 2020/early 2021. I don’t want everyone else to have to do that – so I compiled all my information, all my research, all my tips, tricks, hacks, and recipes into one place…my Laundry Guide!
It’s available to purchase for $7 here!
My heart behind this is simply to help and serve as many people as I can. And this was the best way I knew how.
I’ll leave you with two things – a story and a statement.
My story is probably my biggest eye opener as to how potent the ingredients in laundry detergent are.
I mentioned that oldest was a baby when I started this whole process of swapping our toxic products in our home. He was about 8 months old when I started with the candles and cleaners, and right at a year when I started with the laundry. So basically all of his clothes up until a year of age, were washed in a generic version of Dreft. Then I switched and started using my non-toxic alternatives. I boxed all of his clothes up not thinking twice about it, as he outgrew them.
Flash forward 1.5 years when I was pregnant with my second, another boy, and I started going through old baby clothes. I opened that first Rubbermaid container (and I had a lot!) and my nose was met with the strongest aroma. My eyes immediately started burning and within minutes I had a headache, which turned into a raging one.
Over 1.5 years in a Rubbermaid and the strength of that fragrance smacked me in the face and took me down with a headache.
Now, when I was washing ALL of our clothes in that detergent, did I have a headache every day of my life? No I did not. (Although I did have them significantly more!). It wasn’t until I cut it out of our home completely, had been away from that scent for 1.5 years, and then was exposed to it again, that I realized the potency of the detergents and products I used to use. I mean an immediate headache and burning eyes?
This continued to happen with each bin and size of clothes that I went through, until I got to the size clothes where I had initially made the switch. That was all the convincing I needed that I’d made the right decision to ditch the traditional and name brand laundry products.
On a side note, I also noticed a SIGNIFICANT reduction in my son’s eczema spots about the same time I made the switch, and my second son never really had any issues. Now, can I say with absolutely certainty that it was the old detergent that caused his eczema in the first place? No, of course not. There’s so many factors! And it also wasn’’t just the laundry detergent that I had switched…I’d switch our household cleaners, swapped his soap and lotions, etc. So any of those things could have contributed to his eczema patches in the first place, and the reduction thereafter. But all I know is they were bad on his back, chest, and arms, and they went away and haven’t come back :).
Ok sorry, that was a long story.
So the statement that I mentioned that I’ll leave you on…please know that I am not trying to scare you here! And please don’t think that I’m here saying your laundry detergent is going to cause something bad to happen. I’d say that’s most likely not the case!
BUT I do believe that all the toxins that we are exposed to on a daily basis (cleaners, soaps, makeup, personal care products, laundry products, etc) add up. And in our day and age we are exposed to ALOT on a daily basis. I think that toxic build up (of course among other lifestyle habits as well) is a huge contributing factor to our health and wellbeing as a whole these days!
There’s lots of research and evidence out there on that…I’m not a professional and I’m not here to get into that.
I’m just here to say that I strongly believe that small changes can make a big difference. And swapping out your products in the laundry room – a place that holds a lot of toxins and harsh chemical ingredients – is a really great step in reducing that toxic load in your home.
So anyway – that’s my laundry room saga! I truly hope it helps you if you’re on this journey too.
Xoxo, Alli