We recently had the opportunity to try Earth Breeze Laundry Detergent Eco-Sheets. I’ve been interested in them for awhile but am always hesitant to add new cleaners or soaps in our house. In order to add a new product into our house it has to meet three tests:
- We have a daughter with VERY sensitive skin and many soaps and detergents are irritating.
- I am picky about the way cleaners smell.
- It has to be cost effective
and now a bonus criteria:
4. I want to have less negative impact on the environment. I am actively seeking products that have less packaging, less trash and less shipping requirements.
We tried the Earth Breeze in the unscented variety and we used the entire package in the course of a couple of weeks. Here is how it fared on all our criteria.
- Our daughter with sensitive skin (and the rest of the family) had no negative effects from this detergent! That was great! There are very few that we have found that do not cause her to have problems.
2. The whole family agreed that the “Unscented” smell was pleasant. It left a very faint “clean” smell on the clothes that was not harsh or strong or unpleasant. There were no odors remaining on the clothes from sweaty gym clothes to kitchen towels.
3. Cost effective? Well, this package was free in exchange for my honest review. The retail price of this product is between $16.99 and $20 for 60 loads (28 cents to 30 cents per load). As tiny as the sheets looked, I was concerned that I would need to use two per load because we have a large capacity washer and have some pretty dirty laundry (sports, kitchen laundry). I told my son, who is in charge of laundry to only use one sheet because we were testing the product, and we wanted to give a fair test based on the package’s suggested use. It did say that for VERY soiled clothes or extra large loads you may want to use two sheets. I never needed to rewash anything because it did a really great job cleaning.
4. MOST EXCITING: There is zero plastic wasted. The packaging it arrived in was a simple envelope. It could be put right into my (very modest and often weedy garden) and would go right back into the soil in a few months.
The other thing I thought about was how nice this would be for traveling with the family. When we went on a cruise we took laundry detergent to wash up a few things as needed on the trip and it can be really tough on my daughter’s skin so we had her pack more clothes. Also, when travelling to a place where we could take a liquid laundry detergent, it was bulky, a bit heavy and was a spill risk. With these, I could easily just slip an entire package in the suitcase with very little added weight and no spill risk. If I had to do a tiny load, like in the sink of a cruise ship, I could just take a part of a sheet to dissolve in there.
The only problem I had with this detergent (in 60 loads) is when we had it in there with a fitted sheet. The sheet got caught in one corner of that thing and you could see where it had all absorbed into that one corner and did not really rinse well. I think next time I would just put the sheet of detergent on the bottom of the washer.
Have you tried Earth Breeze yet? I’d love to hear other’s thoughts.
