Superwashing Tip

I recommend Country Save Non-Chlorine Bleach on solveeczema.org as a laundry booster.  (Not their detergent, obviously, just the non-chlorine bleach.  Unfortunately, last I checked, the packages look nearly identical.)

In my experience, Country Save Non-Chlorine Bleach is probably the most helpful laundry booster to aid in superwashing.

I just did a load of hand-me-down kids’ clothing from a friend who uses detergent.  I have sometimes had to wash the clothing (initially) a dozen or more times to get the old detergents out so my son doesn’t react.  I have found that soaking the clothing with soap flakes and Country Save Non-Chlorine Bleach works noticeably better than soap alone or soaking with just water or soap.  I still have to wash several times, but it cuts the number of necessary washes down considerably.   So I will wash & soak with Country Save and soap flakes once or twice (or more, depending), then wash with soap, then wash with just water.  

Borax works well as a laundry booster, too.  It does a better job of removing old perfumes and scents than anything else I have tried.  Please refer to comments and cautions about both Borax and Country Save Non-Chlorine Bleach in regard to superwashing on www.solveeczema.org .

Score Another One for Miele

I have a washing machine again!  Thanks to Miele for working with me the way they did.  I know of no other appliance company that offers this level of customer service, consistently, as they do.  As they have over the years.  I have a $50 wedding ring and a grainy, 15-year-old t.v.  I clip coupons and buy milk by the case to save 10%.  But this Mercedes of washing machines is definitely worth every penny (many, many pennies).

Off Topic: One of the best web sites on the Internet

With no working washing machine for a month now, Halloween costume plans had to change in our household.  Fortunately for us, Canon sponsors one of the best web sites on the Internet, from which we were able to print plans to build a really cool red panda mask out of paper card stock. No washing required.

Link to the site:  Canon Papercraft

I don’t have words to do this site justice.  You can download detailed kits for building animals, dinosaurs, pop-up cards, whole towns, trains, airplanes, gift boxes, wedding cake teddy bears, the Parthenon, the Taj Majal, the Sydney Opera House, the Statue of Liberty, and on and on — all out of paper!  And all with the highest level of design values:  clear instructions, amazingly intelligent design, simple to build.  The hardest thing is just cutting out the pieces.  If you use this site, PLEASE do not forget to thank Canon, as they are sponsoring this site.  It’s absolutely amazing.

Autumn Eczema Redux

With summer weather waning, and dry autumn air posing the usual seasonal problem for people with eczema, hits on solveeczema.org and this blog are up.  It’s time once again for me to pull out the winter clothing, the Aquaphor, and my post on this issue from last year, Autumn Eczema.

An excerpt:

Summertime humidity can be such a help to those who are in the problem-solving stages, or who have a baby whose exposures are very difficult to control. Unfortunately, when autumn rolls around, and the heat comes on indoors – drying the air – people with detergent-reactive eczema become more susceptible to breakouts from lower levels of detergent.

I have in the past told friends to write a note about this in their calendars and not to panic if they see new breakouts at this time – they just have to be a little more vigilant to bring detergent exposure down to a lower level for awhile. (Usually they forget and panic anyway, but soon sort it out with just a little more vigilance.)

As I point out on my site, absent detergents that increase skin permeability, even dry air will not result in eczema in susceptible individuals. If you’ve gotten lax like we always did over the summer, now might be a good time to increase vigilance about exposures to prevent those autumn breakouts. (Or, wait until the heat comes on and just remember not to panic…)

Washing Machine Blues

So, for the second time in a year, both of my Miele washing machines failed within a few weeks of each other.

Yep, you got it.  I have two front-loading, high-efficiency washing machines.  For a long time, they were the most expensive things we owned, including the cars.  I thought they were worth it – energy efficient, clean well, can wash anything from wool sweaters to dirty gym socks, so little wear and tear on clothing, and so worth it because of the eczema.  But the repair problems…  

The last time they failed, it was the water valves in both machines.  This time both failed catastrophically.  One somehow got a nickel stuck on edge between the drum and the drum enclosure.  It squashed the nickel down and punched in the drum all the way around.  (You’ve got to see this – I’ll try to upload a photo of the nickel later this weekend.)  

We called for repair, but it wasn’t the company’s fault (though I am bothered by the fact that this machine design allows coins to get in there if they could do this kind of damage).  My husband spent a day fixing the drum, only to find that there are other broken parts.  The other machine had a catastrophic failure – the bearings were replaced within the last two years, but somehow, it’s all gone bad again.  The belt behind the drum has practically vaporized all over the place.  

Now I have no working washing machine.  This was a bad time for this to happen.

One of the machines is a stacking machine, and the dryer works just fine.  But we can’t afford another Miele washer, and we don’t have space NOT to have the stacking unit.  

Miele has the most incredible repair department and really stands behind their products, but we can’t afford to repair or replace these machines.  If anyone has recommendations for a good value in washing machine that doesn’t cost so much, I would love to hear them!  Please send email through the solveeczema.org site.  Thanks!

No-detergent Diaper Wipes

When our son was a baby, we used a great diaper wipe from a company called Tushies.  It had no detergent in it whatsoever, and the major cleansing ingredients were aloe and glycerine, which are also good for the skin.  We loved that we could understand every ingredient – no ten-syllable words you can only find in a chemical industry manual.  

The wipe worked well.  But then the company changed the formula – it became just another one of those supposedly “natural” detergent wipes.  When we ran out of the old formula, we switched to a spray bottle with filtered water and Bounty paper towels for diaper changes.  If we tore the paper towels into individual pieces and stacked them next to the changing table, this turned out to be no more trouble than wipes.  It also worked extremely well.  After cleaning up with the water and paper towels, we patted the skin with a little cornstarch, and that was it.  We never had any diaper rash, not once.  So we stopped using the wipes and never looked back.

But wipes come in handy for more than just diaper changes.  They are great for on-the-go clean ups.  Teachers at school even ask parents for donations of wipes along with other school supplies.

I recently went to the store expecting to find nothing but detergent-soaked diaper wipes.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Tushies seems to once again be making a simple no-detergent diaper wipe under the Tushies name.  I tried TenderCare wipes (which I believe are also made by the Tushies company) – the product works well, is flushable, and best of all, has a short, simple, truly natural and safe ingredients list.  No detergents.  Not even any ingredients I had to scratch my head about and look up on the Internet to be sure.

Picture Eczema

(I’m still stretched and stressed by medical paperwork and still not able to spend much time with the site.  So, here is a post from my draft archive…)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  I receive many wonderful words of thanks, but relatively few pictures.  Or I should say, I receive a lot of offers to send pictures – only to hear later almost as many epiphanies of how eczema changed parents’ lives without their realizing it.  It happened to me, too, in the same way.

A friend – whose baby’s eczema is entirely related to detergent exposure – recently gave me a “before” photo of her son with terrible baby eczema.  I have some beautiful “after” photos that I took myself.  I am wondering whether to post them on my blog – the “before” photos are so fuzzy.  And my friend says they were only taken after they had already started removing detergents and the eczema was 90% better. Typical story.  

In the past, when people wrote to tell me their stories of dramatic transformations, I often asked if they were willing to share photos.  People were very generous, offering to go through their photos to find good “before” and “after” comparisons.

In my own case, looking for those photos was an eye opening experience.  Until I needed photos for the newsletter articles, I hadn’t realized how much our picture taking habits had changed:  after the eczema became severe, we took far fewer pictures.  We took photos from a distance, or of a “good” side when the eczema waned.  We don’t have any photos showing the eczema at its worst, not one. 

That story played out over and over again when parents contacted me and offered to look for photos.  Like me, these parents did not realize how their picture taking had been affected by trying to work around the eczema.  So many times parents got back to me – often with sheepish apologies – only to report in wonder that in fact they didn’t have any good “before” close ups of the eczema at its worst.

So, if people have photos and offer them, that’s great and it helps for other parents to see them.  There are a few on the “Letters” page of Solveeczema.org, and a few more in my files that I’ll get around to posting someday.  But I almost never ask for them anymore.

If you are just starting the process described on the Solveeczema website, it’s a good idea to take a few photos of the eczema at its worst.  If detergents are the problem, when the eczema is cleared up, old photos help explain the choices you continue to make to protect your child.  

As much as parents may forget altering way they take photographs of their child with eczema, they also seem to frequently forget how bad things were once everything is cleared up.  There is nothing like old photos to remind yourself of what you did for your child, and just how much better things are when the eczema is cleared up.  This comparison, too, seems a perennial, wonderful surprise – like a cosmic pat on the back.

 

Tom’s of Maine SLS-free Toothpaste

Here’s cause for celebration:  Tom’s of Maine has launched a new line of SLS-free toothpastes.  They are made of simple, straightforward ingredients.  No detergents.  www.tomsofmaine.com

More cause for celebration: some have fluoride.  These may very well be the only non-detergent (and no-sorbitol) toothpastes with fluoride out there.  (For people who don’t want fluoride, there are no-fluoride options, too.)

I have only one reservation – and only because I don’t know enough yet, not because there is a problem.  The pastes in this line all contain a foaming agent called glycerrhizin, which I have not been able to adequately check out.  It appears to have an impact on membrane permeability, but I cannot figure out whether it might have a positive effect here, a negative effect, or perhaps may not be of concern.  From the things I’ve read so far, there may be no straightforward answer for us short of just trying it out.

Bottom line – spot test it first before using, and talk to your doctor if you have any concerns.  We did a spot test, and so far so good.  Yay!  

I am thrilled to see a prominent natural product company like Tom’s of Maine offer such an extensive line of detergent-free toothpastes!

 

 

Make your own soap powder the easy way

Check this out – someone is selling already grated soap for making your own soap-based laundry powder:
http://www.soapsgonebuy.com/ 

They sell Borax in bulk, too.  I can’t for certain say that all of their products are non-detergent, but most seem so.  (I would be careful to check out the unscented “powder” first by asking them directly, because they don’t say what brand of hard soap they start with or what ingredients are in it.  However, they do seem to know the difference between “old-fashioned lye soap” and detergent.)

The site also has a section with laundry powder recipes using grated soap.

11 pound delivery

I finally got my medical insurance appeal in the mail last Saturday.  The package weighed 11 pounds!  I hurt my hand trying to finish it – I have never had a technological strain injury before.  Ouch! 

My copy of the appeal also weighed 11 pounds.  The stack I had to make just prior to this weighed 15 pounds – 7.5 pounds for me, 7.5 pounds for the lawyer helping me produce the letter to go with the most recent 11 pounds of paper – ironically produced on Earth Day.  

It’s hard to even contemplate the wasted effort – mine, and that of millions of other Americans.