Cancer treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy can cause some skin sensitivity and rashes. I have found a recipe for home-made laundry detergent that is all-natural and mild, which would hopefully reduce any possibility of irritation. The other benefits are: it is odour-free (some of the scents in detergents are the likely culprits of an adverse reaction), packaging-free and......free! It's easy to make and, literally, a walk in the park.
Here's what to do:
Collect a few conkers (horse chestnuts, not edible chestnuts), as fresh as possible (dry ones are harder to chop up).
Wash and allow to dry.
Chop up a handful (can blitz further in a food processor).
I removed the brown outer shells as far as possible, but don't worry about that too much.
Soak about half a cup of the chopped conkers in a cup of hot water for a minimum of 30 min or overnight if the chopped pieces are fairly large.
Filter the milky-looking liquid through a sieve.
Store the liquid in a clean jar in the fridge for a week or so.
Use about a cupful per wash - the amount will depend on the concentration of your filtered liquid so experiment.
If you don't want to use all your conkers at once, allow the chopped pieces to dry out and store in a jar until required.
Soaking the conkers allows the release of saponins. These are soap-like substances which are sometimes added to our industrially-made detergents anyway. They are also in soap-nuts which are another alternative to shop-bought detergents; commonly used in India, they have become more popular as an "eco-alternative", but as always, you have to balance the costs of transporting them and packaging costs too. So conkers are a nice local solution.
N.B. There is a possibility that if the dark shells are not removed, the detergent may not be ideal for white washes. Be careful and test first on tea-towels or something that isn't too precious!
For those of you who don't have the time or the conkers for this, for 18 months now I've been using another home-made laundry detergent that I make from bulk ingredients bought on Amazon. It doesn't have any odour but you could always add a few drops of an essential oil.
Ingredients:
1 bar Natural soap, grated (I use laundry buttermilk soap)
250 g Borax substitute (I use Dripak Borax Substitute)
250 g Washing soda (I use Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda)
Use 1-2 tablespoons per washing load
For further details about the benefits and reasons to use home-made detergent, take a look at this link from the Guardian's column "All You Need is Less".
