#blessed knowledge

I knew about this for a few years, but this is my first time trying it! Firstly this cannot be done with edible chestnuts, you need specifically conkers, or horse chestnuts, we find them everywhere around parks here and children usually collect it to throw at each other:

Also, these are poisonous so don't eat them. However, it turns out their insides have the chemicals for making soapy bubbles! All it takes it to open them, and soak them in water, and you get the equivalent of a laundry detergent. I opened a few up and cut them in small pieces to try this out; they're supposed to soak in warm water for 20 minutes:

It got very soapy when I shook it! This is then strained and used as you would use regular laundry detergent, the conkers aren't put in the washing slot! They need to be strained. You can use them without soaking tho, by putting them in a sock, tying up tight, and just letting them wash together with laundry. They don't melt or anything, they'll still be the same after being washed, you can compost them afterwards.

I put the liquid in my washing machine, and tried it out with my dirtiest clothes, the gardening gear that is always filled with mud spots and garden bag that I carry unwashed produce in. It came out all clean. It was even washed in cold water so I know it was the soapy conkers who did it. The clothing comes out completely odorless, so it's okay to add some nice smelling softener, altho few drops of essential oil in a yarn ball would still work? Clothing is, however, perfectly soft to touch and pleasant to wear. 10/10.

 So the conkers are only around during fall, and we need detergent all year round, so here's how to preserve them and have free laundry detergent forever.  We're going to cut and dehydrate them.

 I cut and peeled mine, and then I needed them to be in smaller bits, so I wrapped them in a cloth and smashed it with a hammer for a while. That will actually ruin the cloth, so if you do it, use the one you don't like. You can also just run them thru a food processor, I've seen people do that.

People usually dehydrate them in an oven for like, an hour and half, but I wanted to try with drying on top of a radiator, since it is very warm and pieces are small enough. I made these long origami boxes from newspapers so I could spread them in very thin layers in there. After only few hours, they felt completely dry and hard like rocks. It's recommended to store them with a little bag of rice so the rice would take in any extra moisture. If they happen to go bad because I didn't oven-dry them, I'll make an update! But they seem to be perfectly okay for now. With dry mixture, it only takes 2 tablespoons of it per load of laundry, so even just one jar of it will last for months.