Forgive that reference (or don’t – it’s punny and I’m not sorry). Seriously, though, Sal Suds has become my answer to 90% of my problems. The ones that involve messes anyway.
Stains on laundry? Not anymore.
Stuck-on grease on dishes? Not a chance.
Ran out of carpet cleaner solution? But did you though?
Need to wash your car? Easy peasy.
What to put in a pressure washer? As if there was another option.
Can’t use Blue Dawn anymore because it contains a petrochemical that will put you into an anaphylactic reaction? (Okay, maybe this one doesn’t apply to you, but it’s not just me!)
I can’t tell you how much room we freed up in our cabinets realizing how versatile this stuff is. They aren’t lying when they give you dozens of uses for it on their website. We haven’t been disappointed in a single one we’ve tried yet. We have used this exclusively for months and continue to be happy customers! (If you were thinking ‘evangelists’, you weren’t wrong.)
This stuff is super concentrated – when the bottle says ‘1 drop’, they aren’t lying! You’ll know when you’ve used too much, because you’ll end up with bubble bath-level suds coming up out of your sink (not that I’ve poured in a smidge too much into running dishwater, turned my back, and then found a cat named Crookshanks playing in the suds. Nope.). It’s made in a sustainable way and is biodegradable once it swirls down your drain. It’s PEG-free and has a natural clean scent from spruce and Siberian Fir oils.
So far, I’ve successfully used this stuff for all-purpose spray (dilution below), car wash, upholstery/carpet cleaner solution, hard floor cleaner, cleaning any hard surface in a bathroom, removing sticky labels off of containers I wanted to re-use, stain remover, laundry detergent, and dissolving stuck-on sugary soda dripped down the back of a piece of wood furniture. The only downside I’ve found is that if I use it too frequently, it can be drying to the skin; I tend to wear cleaning gloves when use it at higher concentrations or if I’m submersing my hands.
This all-purpose spray is 1 tbsp of Sal Suds to 1 quart of distilled water. The cost for this is ~50 cents per quart. Compared to the 1 tbsp to 1 c of distilled water for castile soap – this can be a penny saver! This gets used on sinks, faucets, toilets, doorknobs, vinyl car interiors, bathroom surfaces, and any sticky messes.
This stuff works wonders on car upholstery. One drop in your cleaning solution compartment with warm water is all it takes. Detergent is like velcro for dirt, so be sure to rinse thoroughly so your seats don’t look worse than they started within a few weeks’ time. I’ll spare you the photos of the dirty water that came out of my car seats (which have been covered with neoprene seat covers since the last professional detailing!). You’ll have to try it for yourself. Be prepared to be grossed out.
I’m working on the perfect dishwasher detergent recipe, but it’s still in R&D, as they say. I’ll be sure to share when I get it juuuuust right.
An aside: our cleaning products are now all dilutions of castile soap or Sal Suds. We still use both and have reasons behind which one we reach for. Lisa Bronner, one of Dr. Bronner’s grandkids, has a great blog post about how she chooses which product for a given application. She also has a very helpful section about the differences of how soap works versus detergent. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time!
Donita Westman 