I’ve been doing our laundry with soap nuts.

They grow on trees. They’re dried shells of a fruit.

They look funny and smell funny, but they work pretty well. The laundry comes out smelling clean and feeling soft. Even my line-dried bath towels are less crunchy. They’re almost soft. And they smell like clean, line-dried, sunshine baked towels.

You tie a few of these into a little cotton bag, and put them in the washing machine. They release a mild, natural detergent into the water.

From what I read on the internet, they work better with warm water than with cold water, and they’re less effective if you have hard water. We have normal water, and so far I like them.

I read about using vinegar and baking soda for cleaning on some of the housekeeping blogs, and I wrote it off as being like coupon clipping — something that probably wouldn’t work all that well (for me, at least) and that would be a hassle and would end with weariness, frustration, disappointment, and a mess. So I didn’t even bother trying them. How could they possibly work?

This week, though, I read one blog post too many about them and I got curious. I decided to give them a try, even if it was only to finally know that they didn’t really work. And guess what. They work. They work almost as well as regular cleaning products. Not quite as well, but surprisingly well. Shockingly well. Maybe eighty-five percent as well. Well enough that I’m going to keep using them. Well enough that knowing I could eat them more than balances out the need to scrub a little harder in a couple of places. Well enough that I didn’t have to scrub all that much harder.

You use the vinegar where you would use a counter-top or window-cleaning spray. I used it on my counters, my mirrors and my floors. I didn’t dilute it.

You use the baking soda where you would use a powder scrub product. I used it in the bathtub and on the kitchen sink.

I’m not giving up my other cleaning products entirely. I’m still using toilet cleaner in the toilet bowl. It’s eco-friendly, but it’s not something I could eat. And I might pull out my eco-friendly but non-edible counter spray and scrubbing powder if the amount of scrubbing needed ever increases dramatically. But I’m not sure. Baking soda and vinegar work well enough that I may switch over entirely.

I’m kind of amazed that using them sounds so weird and that it felt like I was taking such a leap of faith when I tried them. I’m kind of amazed that everybody isn’t using them all the time. I’m kind of amazed that there’s a market for harsh chemical cleaning products for everyday use after trying these.

When I’m cooking and cleaning up around the house I like to listen to books on tape from the library.

Folding laundry and watching The French Chef

One of our friends spent about five minutes at a holiday party trying to convince me that I should start drying my clothes on a clothes line. We have a back yard and plenty of space, and it would save energy and be good for the planet, and just think about how good all that laundry would smell.

“But I dry all my laundry on the lowest setting,” I protested. “That saves energy. And birds would poop on the laundry.”

“Just try it. Try an experiment and see how much bird poop actually hits your clothes.”

It actually sounded kind of nice, so last time I went to the grocery store, I picked up some laundry twine and some clothes pins. And it was kind of nice. I liked tying the rope around the trees, and when I hung my cloth napkins on the line, they looked like something out of a novel about kids catching frogs and solving mysteries in the summer. I liked it. No birds have pooped on our laundry so far, but the bath towels are kind of crunchy.