Meliora K Natural Laundry Detergent [Review]

As more and more natural products fill the shelf space at stores, it is still imperative to read the ingredients label and to ask the right questions. In a world of "greenwashing" and unregulated terms (like "natural"), we have to continue asking the questions about the ingredients that are in our products. The laundry and cleaning products that we use go into our water. If we use toxic cleaners, then they will contaminate our water supply. Not only will more chemicals need to be used to clean our water supply, but the toxic chemicals will also touch our skin as we wear our clothes and use our towels and sheets. Finding natural laundry products that clean well and leave no toxic chemicals behind is possible! Meliora K provides simple, natural cleaning products with full ingredient transparency.

Right Hand Laundry Powder       ($5.99, 16 loads/standard washer)
No Frills Soap Bar                         ($3.99, 4 oz)
Rating: total green check marks out of 5.

The Good	The Not So Good
100% natural ingredients
Effective
Fragrance-free
No unnecessary additives

Meliora K sent me three products to try out. I received the Right Hand Laundry Powder (16 loads for a standard washer and 32 loads for a high efficiency washer), No Frills Soap Bar, and the Right Hand Hand Laundry Powder in the travel size. The Right Hand Laundry Powder includes the No Frills Soap Bar. The soap is cold processed by hand in small batches. The soap is formulated to be simple, but effective. The No Frills Soap Bar can be grated to make your own laundry detergent. How great is that?! I really like the travel size container, which can be refilled and packed for travel.

Let's talk about the Right Hand Laundry Powder. The ingredients list is simple and contains only what is required to clean the clothes and cloth diapers. While many laundry detergents and cleaning products do not publish their ingredients list, Meliora K focuses on full transparency.

Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Carbonate, Soap (Organic Coconut Oil, Water, Sodium Hydroxide*) *Sodium hydroxide is 100% reacted in soap-making process.

The laundry powder is unscented. I prefer my cleaning products unscented or very lightly scented. If you like a little scent in your laundry, you could add 5-10 drops of an essential oil to the laundry powder bag/container and shake it to distribute.

My first use for the Right Hand Laundry Powder was with the cloth diaper laundry. The cloth diapers have had stick issues after being peed in and especially after sitting in the wet bag. After doing some research, I realized that the stick issues could be either due to laundry detergent buildup or the cloth diapers not being cleaned all the way (too little detergent used).

I used a method to strip the cloth diapers by going through one regular wash routine (hot light wash without detergent + hot extra heavy wash with detergent) and then going through a couple of hot medium washes without detergent to see if there were still soap bubbles during the agitation stage.

I have been using Charlie's Soap as my natural laundry detergent (Charlie's Soap) for over one year. The diapers have always come out of the wash smelling clean. However, when I did the first hot wash without detergent and opened the lid after about 1-2 minutes of agitation, I saw soap bubbles. I did 2 more washes like this for a total of 3 washes before I felt like there were no more soap bubbles (not to be confused with bubbles from water moving around).

For the next cloth diaper laundry washing day, I used Meliora K Right Hand Laundry Powder. I went through the same routine as above. During the first post-regular wash, I opened the lid after 1-2 minutes of agitation. No soap bubbles! This means that there was no soap build up with Right Hand Laundry Powder.

I switched between the two soaps a few more times to see if I was getting consistent results. Not a scientific experiment by any means, but I think the results speak for themselves. I have since switched to Meliora K for my cloth diaper detergent in hopes that I will not have any more detergent build up and no more smells. So far as good! Cloth diapers come out smelling clean and stink issues are not as prominent.

Simple and effective ingredients are all that you need to get your cloth diapers and clothes clean. The No Frills Soap Bar can be grated to make your own homemade natural laundry detergent or can be used for hand washing. Meliora K's focus on transparency and effective ingredients makes the natural laundry powder and soap perfect for cleaning.

Disclosure: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. All opinions are my own.