In my house whenever I say, “I need to do the laundry” my hubby jumps up and down screaming, “I’m the laundry”. Unlike most people I know I like doing the laundry, the one where I actually clean our clothes, and even my husband’s version that messes up my sheets. Ideally I don’t see a reason to do the laundry more than a couple of times a week, but there are times I find myself in the middle of doing it and don’t even remember how I got there. Sometimes it’s just easier to give in and do it rather than listen to “the laundry isn’t going to do itself”. It’s easy, you throw a load in while you’re doing other stuff, ok the longer I go down this road the weirder the similarities get…
So anyway, I consider myself a pretty eco-friendly gal. I think I do more than most, but I’ve still got a long way to go. When it comes to “clothes” laundry, I’m always trying to make this domestic ritual more eco-friendly. I never, and I mean never did a laundry that wasn’t a full load using cold water. I’ve tried every eco/green/non-toxic laundry detergent on the market, washed my clothes with soap nuts, attacked stains using only eco-friendly stain removers and line dried almost all my clothes. It should come as no surprise that both my washer and dryer are Energy Star and if I wore a pair of jeans or a top for only an hour or two – I hang them back up to wear again before cleaning them. Stop judging, you know you do that too.
The problem has always been, unless I’m using some sort of actual “detergent”, my laundry is missing two things. My clothes aren’t clean and they don’t smell nice, both of which are factors that seem pretty important in my laundry adventures. So the hunt has been ongoing for a magical laundry solution and I think I just recently found it. I’m a research geek and never met a google search that I couldn’t get lost in like Alice down the rabbit hole. Let me introduce you to my new Bestie, the pureWash pro. Much like the return of Beverly Hills 90210 it sounded too good to be true and I expected crushing disappointment. I read every review I could find and even made my hubby look into it because it just sounded too good to be true. I finally found a friend who actually had one and she said it was the Holy Grail of eco-laundry. She swore that everything good I had heard about it was true and so much more. I was still skeptical; I’m living in a world where now I hate-watch the hot mess that is the 90210 reboot every week but I couldn’t also handle more disappointment in the laundry department, that’s my husband’s job…BOOM! (now I’ll know if he really reads this stuff, just kidding honey). I decided to be brave and hope for the best. I reached out to the makers of the pureWash Pro, explained who I was and what I was about, and now a few weeks later I’m writing about a product that has literally changed my life.
“Giddy with delight” is the best way to describe how I felt when I found the delivery box on my doorstep from the wonderful people at Greentech Environmental. At last the wait was over…I had a pureWash Pro X2 in my house, ready to install and review. Let me rephrase that…for my husband to install and me to review. Hubby knows his way around a pipe wrench but he said that even I would have been able to install it and I’m way more Dora the Explorer than Bob the Builder. He said if you understand how to hang a picture on a wall and attach a garden hose to the nozzle outside your house then you have all the skill required to install this in your laundry room. The fine folks at Greentech Environmental also sent me an awesome magnetic mounting kit, which includes all the hardware and bracketing to mount my purWash unit to the back of our washing machine but because of the way my hubby modeled our laundry room it was better for us to mount it to the wall. I will say that the magnetic mounting bracket was genius and would make it even easier to install, especially if your laundry is in the basement, nobody wants to start drilling holes into concrete walls.
In anticipation of this laundry revolution I took a page out of my family’s book when it comes to laundry…I left it on the floor. It piled up for over a week, even our dog started to make a little bed for herself in this miniature mountain of dirty clothes. My kids were forced to wear the clothes in the back of the closet. You know what I’m talking about, the other 90% of their clothes that they just never put on. After a quick hubby installation (which I’m sure I’ll have to pay for, and not in laundry tokens if you get my meaning) I was elected the mayor of LaundryTown, population me. There’s a joke in here about so many loads in 2 days…something about college…and some kind of “your mom” joke sprinkled on top, but the point is the laundry got done, my husband got “paid” and I’ve learned even laundry dreams can come true.
“Holy Shit, it works!”
The first thing my whole family noticed about my pureWash pro X2 experiment was the smell. Our clothes came out with a clean almost electric smell, one of my daughters actually said “mmmmmm, smells like lightning”. Now don’t ask me how or why she would know what lightning would smell like or if lightning even has a smell, but in a strange way I have to agree with her.
I have been using the X2 for about a month and not once have I added laundry detergent to any of my loads. My clothes come out clean and fresh; although to be fair, for the past few years all my detergents were fragrance free. The other smell I noticed was the smell that was missing. That dank, moldy smell in my washing machine after using it a few times. If you have a front loader you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have to dry the machine after every single use and each month you have to wash your washing machine. It’s friggin’ crazy, you actually have to run an empty load using white vinegar to clean your washing machine. Clean your washing machine, how stupid and wasteful is that? Next you’re going to tell me that shampoo running down your body doesn’t count as showering.
Because I’m a wild woman who lives on the edge, I even started a load of wash before I went to bed and didn’t take it out until the next night. We’ve all done it and usually when you open it up your clothes have that “ugh I forgot we left that dead body in here” smell and you’re forced to wash them yet again. Well, I don’t know exactly what sort of sorcery they’re using over at Greentech Environmental but the “death smell” was gone, not “better” but completely gone. Clean clothes in a lightning storm, that’s what I smelled and I’m not ashamed to say I loved it. I put them in the dryer and went about my day.
So let’s recap
Clothes smell great…check!
Washing machine doesn’t need to be cleaned or wiped down all the time like a toddler running with a full glass of grape juice…check!
Not spending an embarrassing amount of money on strictly organic laundry detergent…priceless!
I can quote you all of the technical specs from their website and from other reviewers, but that’s stuff you can look up yourself and honestly I’m more concerned about the “does it work” than the “HOW does it work” so here are three important facts I want you to walk away from this review with.
- It works
- It works
- A 2nd season of BH90210 should happen
Laundry has never been easier, come out cleaner and fresher or been more eco-friendly. The downside is now I have no excuse to not throw a load of laundry in before bed and leave it until morning. Now that doing the laundry is even easier to do, Hubby has volunteered to help me with the laundry anytime I want. We may each be talking about different versions of doing the laundry, but now I feel like I’m winning either way.
Greentech Environmental provided me with a pureWash Pro to facilitate this review; however, all opinions expressed are my own.
