Earth Day is every day for us at Nellie’s. We’re firm believers in using cleaning products that help you keep the environment as spotless as your clothes! Here are 5 ways Nellie’s helps you get that eco-friendly squeaky clean for your whole home.

Lamby Wool Dryerballs

Our eco-friendly Lamby Wool Dryerballs are crafted from 100% pure New Zealand wool to improve tumble drying. They work to soften your clothes, reduce drying time, static, and wrinkling. This means your clothes are dry faster, saving you money and helping the environment. Plus, the tins aren’t just cute – they’re reusable and recyclable! With a slot at the top, they're a perfect piggy bank to keep all that money you’ll be saving on your energy bill. Traditional dryer sheets are single use and can’t be recycled, but your Lamby Wool Dryerballs are reusable for up to 2 years. These natural alternatives are a no-brainer!

Laundry Soda

Get perfectly clean clothes without sacrificing the environment or your washing machine – Nellie's Laundry Soda's highly concentrated formula dissolves quickly in cold or hot water, rinses thoroughly and never leaves a residue. Plus, it's free from SLS, SLES, gluten, phosphates, fragrance, chlorine, and is HE-efficient, meaning you’re using less energy for your washing machine. Our powder formula is eco-friendly, as more cleaning power can be packed into a smaller space using powder.

Oxygen Brightener

Everyone sings oxygen’s praises for maintaining life on Earth, but do you know its second most popular use (according to us)? We do! Nellie’s Oxygen Brightener harnesses the power of oxygen to penetrate stains to strip away dirt, odor, and grime while keeping your colours bright and your whites white. Our chlorine-free formula is colour safe, septic safe, hypoallergenic, environmentally-friendly, and biodegradable! So much better than bleach, don’t you agree?

Dish Powder

Did you think we’d stop at just laundry? No way! Nellie’s Dish Powder easily penetrates grease and food particles, leaving every plate spotless without leaving a residue. Our phosphate-free formula gives you an eco-friendly cleaning experience and is septic-safe, so you can wash the dishes without worrying about the environment.

One Soap

We think it’s easier on you and the environment to keep things simple – not only when it comes to ingredients. Why use multiple different soaps when you could use just one? Our One Soap is safe for hands, dishes, dogs – anything you would use a sudsy soap for! Our formula is colour-free, SLS, SLES, and toxin-free and effortlessly strips away food, dirt, and grime, leaving just a sparkling, hypoallergenic clean. Do you like yummy-smelling soaps? The One Soap is available in four options: Peppermint, Melon, Water Lily, and Fragrance Free.

With tulips sprouting and warmer days quickly approaching, we’re dusting off winter’s cobwebs with a Spring Cleaning Series to help you prepare for the new season! To kick things off, we’re talking about the place you spend some seriously important time – your bed. We’ve already covered how to clean your mattress and how to clean your duvet, but now that we’re switching over to lighter fabrics like linen for our bedding, what’s the best way to take care of them? Don’t worry, we’ve done the research for you! Keep reading to find out the best way to care for your linen bedding.

1. Be sure to remove any spots before putting the fabric in the wash – once any stains have been cooked on, they’re permanent! Oily stains from body lotion, etc., are not uncommon, so just use your WOW Stick to lift the stains out.
2. Prep your laundry – button any buttons, close any Velcro so it doesn’t snag other things, and turn any patterned or decorated fabrics inside out.
3. Don’t mix bedding with clothes that have metal zippers or a rough texture – any snags could ruin your sheets!
4. Wash with your favourite Nellie’s Laundry Soda – the gentle formula is perfect for cleaning your fabrics without damaging the quality of your linens.
5. Never use bleach – use the Oxygen Brightener to brighten your whites and colours without the nastiness of bleach. It’s better for your fabrics and your skin!
6. Wash in warm or cold water. Lower temperatures are better for the environment, and also easier on your sheets.
7. Line dry your sheets and duvet covers if you can. If you need to use a dryer, make sure the temperature isn’t too high. A too-hot dryer can ruin your fabrics as it weakens and breaks natural fibres.

Other Notes

• Most linen on the market is pre-washed, which gives it a more lived-in feel and appearance. Plus, you can put it in the dryer! Traditional, untreated linen should never go in the dryer. The heat causes the fibre to close up and lose its luster.
• If you’re drying your linens in the dryer, be sure to use your scented Dryer Balls in lavender! Not only will you cut down on drying time, you’ll have lightly scented sheets to help you drift off to sleep.
• Storing linens in plastic can result in yellowing and should be avoided. Natural fibres need to breathe, so a non-plastic basket is ideal for storage.

We wash our clothes to keep ourselves, our families, and our favourite items smelling and feeling fresh, but there is actually such a thing as washing too much or too little! There are downsides to both: laundering your clothes more than necessary can shorten their lifespan and ultimately wear them out more quickly, and washing them too infrequently can be unhygienic and lead to bacteria growth. Yuck! Here are our general laundry guides for you and your family:

For your clothes

Bras: After three to four wears

Underwear: After every wear, of course!

Stocks and stockings: After every wear

Sports and swimwear: After every wear

Jeans: five to six wears, although some advocate washing as little as possible

Tops: One to two wears

Dresses: One to two wears

Pants, skirts, and shorts: Three to four wears

Jackets and blazers: Five to six wears

Coats: Once every two months of wear, and before storing away for the season

Pajamas: Three to four wears

Get your clothes fresh and clean, but don't sacrifice your health and the environment! Wash clothes (and towels, bedding, etc.) with Nellie's Laundry Soda, and remove tough stains with the WOW Stick. If your clothes need some extra brightening or whitening, choose Nellie's Oxygen Brightener instead of toxic bleach.

For your kids' clothes

Washing your kids' clothes doesn't need to be a massive chore! Most experts say you can wash their clothing along with yours anytime you see stains or they don't pass the sniff test. The problem is that kids tend to get dirtier more often than adults do, so those stains and smells come up more frequently. Here's a handy guideline: the lighter and softer the fabric, and the closer it hugs the body, the more you need to was it. But as long as you don't notice dirty patches or stains, kids can wear clothes multiple times before they're ready for the laundry pile, just like you.

For your baby's washing

It seems like the hamper is constantly overflowing with onesies, blankets, burp cloths, bibs, rompers, and tiny adorable socks! Unlike grownups, who typically wear one or two outfits per day (not to mention wear an item of clothing more than once before washing), babies are mess machines with their spit up, drool, diaper leaks, or the dreaded blow out. Because of this, it's not uncommon to change their clothes as much as 5 times per day! So when it comes to washing your baby's clothes, there are two schools of thought:

1) Wash one load every day because it can be done quickly and won't pile up

2) Wash everything once each week so that you only have to spend one day dealing with laundry

Whichever one you choose, make sure you're washing with Nellie's All-Natural Baby Laundry Soda, which is formulated with baby's soft skin and messy mishaps in mind. Thanks to a concentration of sodium percarbonate for natural brightening, as well as the addition of pure vegetable soap, there is no need for an additional whiteners or brighteners. The stain-fighting formula is effective on cloth diapers and removes stubborn baby stains such as milk, baby formula, and spit-up. The formula is derived from plant-based and mineral-based ingredients and is non-allergenic, leaves no residue on fabrics, and contains no fragrance.

In the dryer

When drying your laundry, use the Lamby Wool Dryerballs to cut down on drying time, soften fabrics, and reduce wrinkles, naturally! Then, smooth out any remaining wrinkles and creases with the new Wrinkle-B-Gone.

Of course, these guides don't apply when excessive sweating or accidental spills occur, or to those that have different hygiene preferences.

Unless you live in a nudist colony, wearing and washing your clothes is a part of regular life. Of course, some of us hang our clothes on a line to dry, but it’s safe to say that the majority of us choose the convenience of the dryer. As a result, one of the most toxic things we do on a regular basis is use fabric softener or dryer sheets. These products are full of toxic chemicals! Exposure to such toxins have been linked to skin irritations, neurological disease, cancer, hormonal imbalance, and ultimately your overall health can be impacted. Yikes!

Chemicals infiltrate the clothing we wear, which in turn gets on to our skin and is absorbed by our bodies. Some reports show that the occurrence of brain disease is growing, as well as the levels of industrial chemicals being found in human bodies. Some suggest the two are linked! Since manufactures are not legally required to include a list of ingredients on their dryer sheet packages, we have no way of knowing what kind of chemicals are being used.

Get Soft Laundry Without Toxins

Don’t worry  - you can still have super-soft and scented laundry, without subjecting your body to horrible toxic chemicals thanks to Nellie's Lamby Wool Dryerballs. Our dryerballs are made with 100% pure New Zealand wool, so no nasties! They reduce drying time by helping dry your clothes faster, so you’re saving energy and money. They also reduce static and wrinkles, all while softening your clothes, but the best part is that they’re chemical free and will last about 2 years.

If you prefer your laundry to have a fragrance, the Scented Wool Dryerballs are infused with pure essential oils and available in Citrus, Lavender, and Simply Fresh. The scent will last about 50 loads, so you can enjoy the chemical-free natural scent. We recommend tossing one scented wool ball with your four unscented wool balls to enhance your drying experience.

Summer is slowly coming to a close, and soon your kids will be spending less time at home and more time in school. This is the perfect opportunity to get your house back to the clean and orderly state it was before school was out for the summer. Every household is different, but we have a checklist for a few things we should all be doing around this time of year, including the tools you’ll need.

Back-to-school clothes inspection

Put on the no-nonsense drill sergeant’s hat for this back-to-school wardrobe makeover. With your child’s help, throw out or donate anything that’s too grungy or small to wear to school again this year. Make a list of what you’ll need when you go back to school shopping in the days ahead (a new sweater, pair of pants, etc.) based on what’s heading out the door.

If school uniforms are part of the program, this is the time to start ordering new sweaters, sweatshirts, and the like.

Any stains, smudges, or plain ol’ dirt? Tackle them with the Nellie’s All-Natural WOW Stick for stains, the Oxygen Brightener for non-bleach brightening and whitening, and - of course - the Laundry Soda for giving everything a deep, natural clean.

Take that momentum and turn to the rest of the house: go through your home and make a list of anything you don’t need anymore (old school supplies, toys, furniture, old appliances, etc.). Either donate these items, sell them, give them away to friends and family, or throw them out. It’s much easier to clean with less clutter in the house!

Tidy the bathrooms

Clean out kids’ bathrooms of last semester’s grooming remnants and restock as needed.
Help the kids clean out their bathrooms of last semester’s hair gels and stretched-out scrunchies. Make sure your son or daughter has everything needed to streamline morning grooming. This is especially important if you’ve got teens. If you have a couple of kids with a shared family bathroom, avoid the “It’s hers!/It’s his!” fights by keeping it simple and taking care of the issues now.

While you're there, have the kids help you with chores by wiping surfaces down with the All Purpose Cleaner while you scrub the toilet with the Toilet Bowl Cleaner.

Create a homework space

Create a homework centre. Choose a place where each child can work in comfort and without distraction. Stock nearby drawers or cabinets with school supplies.

If you already have a place, now's the time to go out with the old and in with the new and plan ahead for paper chaos. Set up ‘in’ and ‘out’ boxes for school papers. Kids can unload backpacks and drop off papers to be checked, signed, etc. in the ‘in’ box. You can leave signed papers, money, permission slips, etc. in the ‘out’ box.

Organize and entryway backpack zone

Create a backpack drop zone near the entry door. They’re going to drop those backpacks the second they’re inside anyway, so be prepared with a place to catch them. Whether that’s in cute storage cubbies or tucked in a closet, a designated space prevents scrambling in the mornings. Be sure to give the lunch boxes a good scrub – use the One Soap for a natural and fresh cleaning.

Time for a shop

Once you have a classroom supplies list, plan a day to go back to school shopping with the kids.
Make a back-to-school shopping checklist of everything the kids would need for school, from anything to classroom supplies to lunch boxes. When you’re home, make sure that everything is neatly labeled with names.