Karma Clean soap nuts

I was recently doing a residency where they provide (wonderful!) food, the artists do the cleanup. They had those brightly colored soap pod things, very convenient, someone laughed as I carefully used two spoons to pick it up. When asked why, I said it's that they FELT very toxic. They now have these pods for laundry detergent, too.

Sadly, I was right, I read a story about how a toddler DIED after he ate one of those detergent pods: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/child-eats-laundry-detergent-pod_n_3764770.html

Anyway, if you really like the convenience of packets, there's nothing easier than these Karma Clean soap nuts packets. You toss 'em in the wash--up to 5 washes--then toss 'em into the compost OR you can even soak them in hot water and use as shampoo. I use a product from India called Aritha, that is also made of soap nuts. Soap nuts are basically just the nuts of a kind of tree and they lather and clean GREAT, I think better than chemical soap. We've been using these for years, plus, our appliance guy said they seem to be very gentle on the washer.

Check out Karma Clean, which is a genuine small business owned by a real person--and maybe bug your local health food store to carry these: http://karmaclean.info/