Last year I did away with using commercial laundry detergent that is so harmful for the environment and switched to an eco friendly product. No more liquid fabric softeners either—not that I’ve ever been a big fan of them since most of them smell like baby vomit to me. I know, it’s probably just me.
However, living in Astoria means dealing with our horrible water. Laundry washed in it, no matter what kind of soap I use, still ends up smelling funky. It’s a bit depressing to step fresh from a shower into a funky towel. To combat the issue, I found myself relying more and more on fabric sheets. Bad, bad, bad for the environment. Not so great for masking the smell, either.
So, last year I went hunting for solutions. Many of you make your own laundry detergent using this recipe. Looks great on paper, but you can’t use it effectively in a front loading washers on a cold water setting. So, I opted to add the oxyclean to my load and use a liquid eco friendly detergent and call it quits. Sure, the detergent is way more expensive than Costco’s mega bottle of Tide Ultra, but since the year before we opted to start making our own coffees in house—I could squeeze it.
There is no doubt that when shopping for laundry detergent, my first instinct is to ask: how does it smell? Foolishly, perhaps, believing that smell has something to do with efficacy; never mind the chemicals involved. That instinct is quickly followed by: how much does it cost? And now we get down to it. Laundry is a reality in all of our households and the expense can eat away more of a grocery bill than most of us want to allot. Saving the environment is a worthy cause—but it often comes third or fourth to feeding a family.
I’m no longer in a position to be rationing pennies. No longer do I walk into a store and buy the cheapest item I can find in attempt to work miracles on a thin budget. What a blessing! Instead, I buy items I like using, or support my ethical perspectives, or are a good buy. However, this was not always the case. I can remember right after 9/11 when IZ had NO job, we were bleeding $2k a month in bills, and I was working 40 hours in a bookstore attempting to feed us. The store was in a wealthy part of the Bay Area and our patrons had expendable income to purchase books. Let’s face it, if you can afford to not rely on the public library, life isn’t treating you too poorly.
It was a chatty bookstore and a couple came in and we fell into conversation about supporting independent bookstores. Which, naturally, led to a conversation about the evil that is Walmart and its ilk. Now, the wife of this couple had no idea who she was talking to. Her husband seemed more aware that there was probably a significant difference between their income and my income. So, when this woman ended her rant about how she didn’t understand the patronage of big boxes like Walmart or Target or even Safeway, I couldn’t help but offer this.
“I wish I could afford to buy all my groceries at Trader Joe’s or to buy my clothes someplace other than a chain store. But the truth of the matter is, most of the people who shop at those places are not in a position to choose. I would warrant that most of them would like to walk into swanky Whole Foods too.” Her husband looked at me and with a great deal of compassion said, “We weren’t always in that position either. It takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
This is the bottom of the truth of it, right? Some of us cannot afford to make sweeping changes to support only organic, independent, locally owned products. Not in entirety. To do so would push our budgets beyond their ability to feed our children. When a choice based in cost is a choice about the quality of food we put in our bodies vs. the costs to the environment—it’s a no brainer. It’s not a choice. I’m going to choose good veggies and good protein for my kid’s growing brain. The environment will have to wait. It may be the obvious choice, but that doesn’t mean it sits well with me.
Our budget has not increased overnight. We still go weeks, months sometimes without being paid. So, in order to address this impulse to feed my family AND save the environment, I’ve chosen to focus on ONE thing each year. As our budget has increased, so has our ability to add more tiny changes to our way of living. Last year it was detergent.
Imagine my glee to discover this bottle of eco friendly detergent at Costco. It’s not only good for the environment, but it’s competitively priced with the other name brands you can buy in bulk. Since it comes in a great family sized bottle, this means fewer trips to the grocery store to buy overpriced eco-friendly detergent. Sometimes, you don’t have to choose! Win, win!
Happy, happy me! I walked around Costco yesterday completely amazed. It felt like a reward, really. That after a year of making this tiny choice, the Universe had responded in kind. I kept saying, “IZ, you don’t know how happy this makes me!”
Life is not all or nothing. We don’t have to overhaul our buying choices overnight to favor the environment. Nor does the environment always need to be the last thing we consider when making a choice about where to put our pennies. Sometimes, we can make tiny choices. We can do small things. The difference will add up.
Yay Costco!! A very Blue company from our area-it treats its employees very well also. Being eco-friendly IS expensive at times. I gasp when I go shopping with Ashley in Seattle at their co-op. The prices are SO high!! (but the place is very cool)
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I know! A chain I can get behind supporting. 😀 ~W
Well, I think we are called to do as much as we can within what we can afford to do. Having been in a situation where I could afford to do little or nothing – it sucked. As you said – sometimes you have to stretch a budget and then aren’t left with many choices. I still can’t do as much as I want – but incremental progress is better than no progress. I was really happy to see that Costco carried something so eco-friendly – and I hope they do more of the same. In reality I sometimes wish stuff had a cost associated with it for how environmentally unfriendly it was. Someday we might need that sort of tax to compel change. If everyone produced responsible products, we wouldn’t have to worry about it so much, would we?
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It’s a thought… much like the cities that have banned plastic bags! It may take a top down kind of mentality to actually create the kind of systemic change needed. In the mean time… baby steps! 😀 ~W
If everyone made all the babysteps they could, the world would be better. We still can’t do everything we want to do but we are making changes. We just spent way more on paint for our cabinets than we normally would have because we wanted the low VOC options — heck, we had to change our color choices which is really bugging my husband a lot. But, it would have been so easy to backslide. It wouldn’t have felt good though. I’m going to have to go to my Costco. I’ve tried a couple of “green” soaps in the kitchen but haven’t been really happy with them. It’s frustrating. I’m still looking though.
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Liza Lee… run to Costco immediately for this detergent. Run, run. 😀 (It sells online too, but more costly.) It’s amazing. I’ve done 3 loads so far today and am enamored with the stuff. The water at our house is just so bad, HORRIFIC. Even IZ commente that the laundry smelled great. I washed the first load with just the detergent to see if it could get out stains… and it does a great job! LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff… I’m looking into trying their other products because so far, I’m a FAN!! ~W
I’m in the middle of the cost/budget crisis right now with the HUGE difference between healthy food and junk food. You can get a can of Pringles for a buck, but the same amount of ounces of more healthy chips will cost you four times that much. Very frustrating.
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Oh, I’m going to try not to preach here, because this is a huge peeve of mine: that good food is so expensive, but junk so cheap. The price deferential does NOTHING to help support families who are attempting to eat healthily on a budget! Hang in there!! ~W
I too hate the scent of fabric softener and the scent of most laundry detergents for that matter. Although I haven’t managed to break my habit with unscented dryer sheets (no static! and clothing isn’t as stiff as cardboard) I have switched to BioKleen’s powdered detergent. I like that it comes in a cardboard box and a box last a long time for us and doesn’t strike me as too much more than many other big brands (I can generally find a 100 load box for around $14; considering that Tide and its ilk is at least $6 for 30 or maybe 40 loads…). And the scented version isn’t obnoxiously so, just a slight grapefruity scent to me.
I wish I had some proof, but I heard that the powdered free & clear All was a good option that might be more readily available than the “health food store” brands; it is cheaper too for those who need to be extra mindful of their budget.
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I’m not sure what it is about our water, and it may just be the pipes in our house, but up until today, I’ve not found anything that can combat it. I was using BioKleen’s liquid–as I have a front loading machine and can’t use powder… but I found I had to use a ton of it to get the smell of our water masked. I know other people who rave over it. 😀 This new stuff from Costco runs about the same price as you quoted… but you’re lucky to find such large boxes! I could never find anything but the smaller bottles so I was paying nearly 3x as much. It’s the flip side to living on the Coast, sometimes resources aren’t as plentiful. Small price to pay, really. 😀 ~W
Adding it to my Costco shopping list. Thanks!
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You’re welcome. Enjoy!! ~W
Thank you for this blog entry. A step at a time is a great plan for any endeavor – going green, sustainable, getting healthy, etc.
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That’s a good point. Progress, not perfection. 😀 ~W
Oh, this is not a simple thing, Friend. This is a glorious huge wonderful crazy thing! For I need an eco friendly HE detergent. And, I HAVE a Costco card! AND, it’s monthly Costco week! Oh my.
pretty much unrelated to the eco-friendly side of this (sorry!), but i would just like to figure out how all of my laundry ends up with mystery spots on it!! things that look like grease stains, but aren’t. it’s just odd. lol. i keep wondering if it’s the detergent or the dryer sheets or WHAT!
congrats on your good find, though! 🙂
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It might be something in your washer or dryer. ~W
Wahoo!! You don’t know how happy this makes ME!! I have a gray water system that pipes the laundry water onto trees on mine and my neighbor’s property…and I only use natural and organic detergents because of what may happen to the trees and foliage…I can’t wait to go to CostCo and find this now…wheeee!!!
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Heh, I hope your Costco has it. If not, request it… I’ve found they’re really good about getting things in if you let them know. 😀 ~W
great post, i think i will have to post about your post! i have a section called ‘handy hints’ and i will add your link to it soon. an extended note about a comment above on how much junk food costs compared to healthy food – here’s an experiment: if you do your shopping by only visiting the middle aisles and only grabbing the things from the middle shelves, then do another visit by only going around the outside of the supermarket which is all the fresh produce, meat etc. then look at the difference of your two receipts. and be prepared to vomit! and not just from the price difference! i will be writing more about this soon, hope to keep in touch via our blogs.
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Thanks for the comment and support. I’ll check out your blog soon. And you’re not kidding about the food prices. SAD, SAD. ~W
Well said and thanks for helping relieve some guilt! It seems when I turn to pat myself on the back, I notice something else that isn’t good for the environment and then discover another expensive alternative is required. Argh! But Ahoy, it feels good to make these slow changes!
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You’re welcome! I suspect these tiny changes do a lot more good than even we realize… in that just the very act of changing one thing leads to a kind of heightened awareness. 😀 ~W