I recently watched the movie “STINK” (also available on Netflix in the USA). I first heard about it at Paul Wheaton’s Permaculture Podcast series, episode 402.

The movie lets viewers know that fragrance companies, or any other manufacturers who put fragrances in their products (dishwashing liquid, body soaps, shampoo, etc) do not need to disclose to consumers whether any of the ingredients used to produce their fragrances contain carcinogenic substances, and that the FDA has no power to compel companies to disclose their lists of ingredients, because fragrances are “proprietary” and telling everyone what’s in them would be bad for business because copycats.

That puts all the burden of responsibility on consumers to find out whether the perfumes, body washes, moisturizers, have toxic chemicals in them. Chemical companies have discovered that certain toxic chemicals smell great in certain concentrations.

So! Feeling rather taken advantage of, I went to my favorite local organic co-op and started checking out organic cleaners. Few, if any, disclosed their ingredients too. The ones that did had plant-based surfactants and other things manufactured from natural ingredients. I wanted to see just how basic and simple I could go.

So! I settled on filling up a container from home with unscented castille soap (no fragrances allowed), and I looked up dilutions for various applications:

• Dish soap: 2 tbs castille + 1 cup filtered water. I chose filtered water because tap water will mold/spoil more quickly.
  • My review: Castille soap works fine for dishes. I had to change up my washing style a little since castille soap this diluted doesn’t foam like the Leading Industrial Brand Soap does, but I enjoy the smell. I also noticed that castille soap does not leave a residue. Conventional dish soap leaves something behind on the dishes. It’s hard to say what it is, but I noticed its absence with castille. Also castille soap will leave water spots on wine glasses — if you care about that sort of thing then polish the glasses with a napkin.
• Surface cleaner: 1/4 c castille + fill up spray bottle with filtered water.
  • My review: works great. Easy switch
• Car wash: 1 capful of castille in a bucket of warm water. I made this mix up myself because I wanted to clean off winter road salt from my car and I had about 10 minutes to do it before the sun went completely down.
  • My review. Worked great. I swabbed the car with the mop and got it clean. Noticed water spots the next day but the salt was gone. I don’t care about water spots on my car.
• Body wash / shampoo: I don’t like using castille for body wash as it’s a bit too effective for my preference. Like any good soap it does a great job of stripping the oils out of my hair.

I also switched back to using soap nuts for laundry, with a small splash of vinegar to remove odors. Works better now with the vinegar. I had caved and bought some unscented conventional laundry liquid because my towels didn’t smell good after a few showers this winter, but then I learned about vinegar.

Experiments with using castille soap for house cleaning by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International