New Laundry Soap

Of all the stupid things I've ever been really excited about, this has to be pretty high on the list. My new laundry soap has arrived. It makes me want to re-wash every single piece of fabric in the house. It's called Charlie's Soap. It's made by a small company in N. Carolina. People who use cloth diapers swear by it and end up using it for everything.

When we first decided to cloth diaper, I thought for sure we'd use it. But Trader Joe's store brand (Next to Godliness) laundry powder seemed like it it would be fine. It only had one no-no ingredient (soy-based optical brighteners) so I figured it'd be ok.

And it has been for the most part. The problem with cloth diapers is that any junk that is in your soap stays in your diapers. And almost all commercial soap has junk (fragrance, softeners) in it. It's fine for big people but can cause problems for babies' sensitive skin and gunk up the diapers.

Most of our diapers (and our baby) seem unaffected by this but our Kissaluvs fitted feel practically brittle. So I decided to ditch the TJ's brand and spend 15 bucks (but free shipping!) on a bag of Charlie's. When it got here yesterday I laughed. It was about as big as a pound of coffee. It's pictured here with a can of Rotel for perspective. But as it turns out you only use a tablespoon per load so it will last you 80 loads.

The package says to do an empty load or two with just Charlie's so it can get all the stuff out of your machine. It's supposed to get all of your clothes so clean that they will naturally be softer. I'm excited to find out. It works out to just under 19 cents per load. Based on Amazon bulk pricing, that's still cheaper than Tide and nearly twice as cheap as Seventh Generation Baby, neither of which are good for diapers anyway.