A woman has been praised for her money-saving hack for making her own laundry detergent using a natural ingredient you can pick for free.
No matter how often you may think you’re starting the washing machine, the piles of laundry never stop growing. Because of this, we often end up spending extra money on laundry detergents and fabric softeners in order to make sure our clothes get clean and smells nice when washing them.
But the costs of these laundry items can often add up, and it’s rarely something one is excited to buy. To help, one woman named Amy Chapman has shared her simple trick on how you can make your own laundry detergent using just two ingredients.
“I’ve just spotted a load of conkers, so I’m gonna try using them to wash my clothes,” Amy said at the start of her Instagram video, where she was seen walking through a forest.
As she started to pick some conkers for her laundry, she went on to explain how these natural seeds can be used to clean your clothes without having to use any chemicals – something she’s more mindful of since moving to live on a houseboat.
To turn the conkers into laundry detergent, Amy started off by picking the conkers before giving them a rinse when she got home. She then cut each one up into quarters with a knife on a chopping board, something Amy was surprised to learn was easier than she’d expected it to be.
“But if you cut them smaller, you’ll probably get more of the good stuff out of them,” she told her viewers, as she was seen putting the chopped up conkers into a large bowl.
Then, she continued to pour some hot water from the kettle into the bowl of conkers before leaving them to soak for half an hour, but recommended leaving it for longer if you were to try this yourself.
When this was done, she was seen straining the conkers out and poured the liquid into a different jar. As she was pouring Amy pointed out: “And you can kind of see it’s already quite bubbly.
“And this is the finished conker laundry liquid,” she said, claiming it works great to put in a laundry machine or to handwash items in the sink, which she opted to do.
How can conkers be used as laundry detergent?
Conkers contains saponins, which are natural soap compounds that cleans ‘surprisingly well’, Amy explained.
She continued to say this laundry liquid can last for a few days if stored in a fridge, but you can make it last even longer if you add in salt to the mixture. You can also use dried conkers in a bag in the washing machine, if you don’t want a liquid laundry detergent.
Viewers of Amy’s video were left amazed by the simple and free hack, as many were eager to try it for themselves.
“This is genius,” one person wrote, while someone else wrote: “I’ve just tried this too and it’s amazing!!”
