Help your washer last

Maintaining what you have, keeps you from needing to buy something new. This fall I’ll celebrate ten years with my washer. Here are a few things I do to keep my washer humming along.

1. Keep your washer clean  Once a year I use hot water and a cup of white distilled vinegar in the wash cycle. Vinegar helps remove soap scum and mineral deposits in the washer and hoses. Plain ol’ vinegar is amazing stuff. Check out Heather Levin’s excellent post on the many uses of vinegar.

2. Keep the washer door or lid open  Your washer likes the chance to dry out. 

3. Use 1/4 to 1/3 of the recommended amount of laundry detergent  When it comes to laundry detergent, more is not better. Figure out how low you can go. Try using 1/4 of the recommended amount and check your results. Are your clothes still clean?

4. Don’t overload your washer  No one likes a heavy load.

How about you? Share your laundry secrets in a comment.

My secrets… I’ve had a great experience using eco-friendly Dropps laundry detergent, and I love my expandable, collapsible clothes drying rack.

Dropps: Convenient and earth friendly laundry detergent

My new super cool clothes dryer arrived and with it came a sample for a new product called Dropps. Dropps are tiny lightweight pacs of concentrated laundry detergent. Drips, spills, and lugging heavy containers are distant memories. 

Convenient yes, but what makes Dropps unique IMHO is that they’re also earth friendly – they conserve water, energy, and plastic. What a winning combination! Convenient and earth friendly.

Inside the plastic pouch (OK, the product is not perfect) are little toss-and-go pacs that are about the size of a rather large gummy bear. Just pop a pac in your washer and it magically dissolves.

• Phosphate-free, chlorine-free and NPE-free
• Scented and unscented, dye-free versions
• The lightweight pacs require much less energy to ship and transport
• Although, the pacs come in a plastic bag, the bag uses much less plastic than a jug (300x less plastic).

Do they clean well? Yep! They sure do. I found Dropps to work just as well as the product I was lugging home before.

The Cost?

Amazon is selling a 84 load pouch for $30. So the cost per load is about 36 cents (assuming you have Amazon Prime). Check here to see is Dropps are available locally. If Dropps seem a little spendy to you, you can save some money by washing your clothes in cold water, wearing them more than once, and using a nifty clothes dryer.

Other earth friendly detergents

Other eco-friendly laundry detergents on the market include: Ecos, Ecover, Seventh Generation and Sun and Earth. Consider using a phosphate-free dishwasher detergent as well.