Wednesday, April 30, 2008

HE and Detergent

Did you get the memo? Being green is in. I kind of chuckle at it sometimes, I mean really, who uses only one square of toilet paper?

But in all seriousness I am all in. Bring on the recycling, I did it in Germany, now those are SERIOUS recyclers. And I am happy to do my part to keep my eco-footprint low. It does make me laugh that all of a sudden all of these celebrities are all "green". How can you be eco-friendly in a 9,000 sq.ft. home with 11 bathrooms and 2 pools?

As we were moving into our new place we needed to purchase a new washer/dryer. Bif and Kris gave us their old set when we moved back to Atl, and it worked well enough, but it was on its last leg. We bought a set of front loaders which are high efficiency (HE). As a parting comment the salesman mentioned that we would need to use HE detergent, but most all of the detergent is HE...so he said...

Did I mention that at least 3 of us have skin allergies? So, the only detergent Dave and Hadleigh can use is Dreft. The only detergent I can use is either Dreft or Cheer. And forget fabric softener! I washed all my clothes with Snuggles one time. Within an 1 hour, I had a rash from head to toe. I can use Downey, but Dave cannot. So, ok, we have issues! Well, guess what...Dreft doesn't come in HE. OK, so I start looking for Cheer. I know that Cheer Free comes in HE, but I cannot find it anywhere. I decided at that point that we will have to just get little bottles of each of the "free" detergents and see what happens. Woolite was first. I figured, hey, Woolite is easy on clothes, so maybe it is easy on skin. We were actually all doing fine with Woolite until I washed our sheets in it. The next morning I woke up with a rash all over my hands and arms...BUMMER. So, off to the store to find a different detergent. I picked up Tide Free. Tide has actually been our fam's worst nightmare, you do not want to see our rashes after we have worn anything with Tide in it. But, I thought maybe Tide Free would be good.

I am now rash free, so here's to the environment.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

I was thinking that Annie will grow up being "green" like the kids I taught grew up being "PC." I had students who weould say things like, "Can you say that the character is black? Isn't that racist?"

Allison said...

You might want to try All Free and Clear. It comes in HE although what I have done in the past is just use much less of the regular detergent for my front-loader. But both John and John David's skin is very sensitive and the All free and clear seems to work well, not to mention it really does get stains out and costs less than most brands. John David just had a breakout of hives yesterday and the day before and the only culprit I can imagine is the Oxiclean I added to ALL of our laundry...doing laundry once is bad enough but can you imagine how hard it has been to take FOLDED clothes and put them back into the washer? And what was I thinking adding such a harsh chemical to our clothes?! Silly me for wanting to have brighter whites.

By the way, we are "going green" too and I'm planning to blog soon about the laughs I've received in the face of my recent enthusiasm about wanting to plant an organic garden using homemade compost and everything. (I was talked out of making a bed for John David for now, but I'm not giving up on the hope that one day he will sleep away in a bed built by his mama...or just sleep..that would be lovely too.)

M & M said...

hope it stays that way--rash free, I mean!!!

Christy said...

You could also try Planet. Can't get any greener than that! It's expensive, but it's what I use for my cloth diapers. I found it at Kroger.