I am always looking for ways to limit the chemicals in our household and that has included trying many different laundry options with some not too great results.
I have tried a lot of the cloth friendly detergents for my cloth diapers (yes they are mine lol) and always ended up with smell and disappointment. I keep looking for any option to try to limit the main stream detergents because of all the chemicals in them but have found that they are the only ones that work in Calgary's hard water
I was very excited when I heard about The Patented Magnetic Laundry System. The website says that they can be used without detergent to get clean laundry with out the chemicals! This I had to try!!!
Now how do you use them.... You put them into your washer and they are supposed to pull in the elements that are in the water thus making the water softer which in turn helps the water do its job of cleaning.
You see thats what detergents are supposed to do...gather up the elements in the water suspend them so that they don't redeposit on the clothing and then the water can do the job of cleaning your clothes! That's right..the WATER cleans your clothes not the detergent. I thought great! I need to try these! And I am so glad I did.
Now I can't say I had complete success with the Magnet Laundry System as I still use detergent (this could be partially because I admit that the smell of clean means smell to me still, with no detergent you don't have perfumed smell just wet clothes)
However I have been able to lessen the amount of main stream detergent I use on all loads including the diapers (which use a full scoop regularly) I can actually notice the difference in the water...hard water causes the detergent to not bubble up as much and not work as well. Well with the magnetic balls I imeadatly noticed that my detergent bubbled more and thus I can use way less. And by way I mean less then half of what I used to use per load. That equals huge savings in a household of seven.
And check out the magnet balls after about a month of use! All that black stuff is bits that the balls have pulled out of the water and they have built up on the balls! Eww!! Just to clarify we do not wash metal particles nor does DH work in an industry where he would get metal particles on his clothing...this is just from washing our normal laundry kids and adults and of course diapers. I was very surprised to see this!
I did take awhile to do this review as I really wanted to use the Magnetic Laundry System.. If you cloth diaper you know that a few washes with a new detergent is not enough to get accurate results. You need to wash and use for quite a few rotations before you begin to notice changes in your diapers from the new routine so I took this into account and really put the Magnetic Laundry System to the test before writing this. This is why I decided that I still want to use some detergent though much much less then I used to, to get my diapers as clown as I feel they need to be. I also feel that if we didn't have SUCH hard water as we do in is house that there is a very good chance that we could just use The Magnetic Laundry System without any other added detergent.
I was also able to try the dryer balls which are little knobby balls that you add to your clothes in the dryer to reduce drying time and static in your clothes. I love these. They have defiantly cut down our drying times and made the clothes softer. We don't use dryer sheets or fabric softener at all so I could notice a difference. They are a bit loud if they get stuck along the side of the machine during the cycle but if it bothered me I would just stick them back in the middle.
Check out The Magnetic Laundry System for yourself on their
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If you are sensitive to chemicals on your clothes, I would be cautious about the dryer balls. They are definitely releasing chemicals in the high heat of a dryer. I use to be an analytical chemist so I know.
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