A thrifty mum makes her own laundry detergent using conkers - and saves up to £60 a month.
Kara Woodhouse, 29, shared the tip on social media and says that anyone with access to a horse chestnut tree can save money on their washing powder
The mum-of-two collects the conkers from September to December, which she uses to make laundry detergent throughout the year.
Kara, who lives in Cambridge, would normal approximately spend £30 every two weeks on washing products which means she saves up to £60 a month.
A video shows Kara and her children Loui, four, and Connie, three, all getting involved in the production of the washing powder.
The key ingredient in the conkers is saponins - a cleansing chemical used by the horse chestnut seed to deter pesky insects.
Kara said: "I saw a video last year about how conkers hold saponins like washing detergent, so I looked into Google to see how it worked."
To make the detergent, the stay-at-home mum bashes the conkers with a hammer and put them in a glass jar that she fills with boiling water.
After she let it rest for 30 minutes, she strains the liquid out into another jar and store in the fridge until needed.
Kara was inspired to make her own natural detergent after her son Loui, who suffers from eczema, reacted badly to store-bought options.
She said: "My son has bad eczema so I would normally use washing detergent aimed for babies.
"But when I saw the conkers thing, I thought well it’s natural so it’s worth a try and thankfully it helped a lot."
Kara Woodhouse, 29, shared the tip on social media and says that anyone with access to a horse chestnut tree can save money on their washing powder
The mum-of-two collects the conkers from September to December, which she uses to make laundry detergent throughout the year.
Kara, who lives in Cambridge, would normal approximately spend £30 every two weeks on washing products which means she saves up to £60 a month.
A video shows Kara and her children Loui, four, and Connie, three, all getting involved in the production of the washing powder.
The key ingredient in the conkers is saponins - a cleansing chemical used by the horse chestnut seed to deter pesky insects.
Kara said: "I saw a video last year about how conkers hold saponins like washing detergent, so I looked into Google to see how it worked."
To make the detergent, the stay-at-home mum bashes the conkers with a hammer and put them in a glass jar that she fills with boiling water.
After she let it rest for 30 minutes, she strains the liquid out into another jar and store in the fridge until needed.
Kara was inspired to make her own natural detergent after her son Loui, who suffers from eczema, reacted badly to store-bought options.
She said: "My son has bad eczema so I would normally use washing detergent aimed for babies.
"But when I saw the conkers thing, I thought well it’s natural so it’s worth a try and thankfully it helped a lot."
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FunTranscript
00:00 So last year I did this, I'm doing it again this year. I've made washing powder out of
00:04 conkers, I've got loads of it in the fridge already and I'm going to show you exactly
00:08 how I've done it. I'd like to say it's completely free but it's pretty much free. So what you
00:14 need to do is you need to go and get yourself loads of conkers and glass jars. Getting
00:22 the kids involved, you bash the conkers up so that they break into lots of pieces, so
00:27 they're getting their little hammers out, bashing them apart. Before anyone comes to
00:32 me for the kids using the hammers, they literally just had a little turn but obviously they
00:36 can't bash them hard enough to do it so no one can come for me for that. Right then you
00:41 just literally, I've got all of them in here all bashed up, look, and then you boil your
00:46 kettle. So I did this last year because the baby has got really really bad asthma and
00:51 it's completely natural, there's no added chemicals and things like that because it's
00:56 literally just conkers and water. Conkers have a natural stain remover in them called
01:03 saponins which you find in all of your normal laundry detergent. Obviously everything else
01:11 added in there, all the chemicals are not added in. So I found that our clothes, one
01:17 smelled great, two were lovely and clean and three helped remove the stains as well. So
01:23 when you add the water in, you leave it to sit for like an hour or so and then it makes
01:28 this frothy solution that I'll show you as we go through. So just literally just waiting
01:33 for the kettle to boil. Right so I've put the boiling water in from the kettle, just
01:37 enough, there's obviously not quite as much in this jar, just enough to cover it all so
01:41 they can soak. You can see all the bubbles slowly starting to come up to the top and
01:45 then that's what happens. So I'll come back in about an hour and see what's happening.
01:50 Oh there you go, you can see it here look, all coming out. So I'll give it about an hour
01:55 and I'll come back and show you. Right it's probably been about half an hour and as you
02:01 can see it's gone like a cloudy solution. You can use a sieve, I just hold the lid over
02:09 and just pour it out. You'll then bubble, all those bubbles on the top there look, that's
02:19 because of all of the saponins. So this is why you need so many jars. So I've filled
02:30 that jar up and then I'll reboil the kettle and fill them up again and I'll probably do
02:35 that about 5 or 6 times. Obviously you have to leave it longer each time as you go along
02:41 just so that the solution is diluted enough. But once you've done it you can put that in
02:46 the fridge and then just use it as and when you need to. Just pop it straight in the washing
02:51 machine like you would do any other normal laundry detergent and then I just pop my softener
02:56 in and happy days, the washing comes out lovely.