Using baby detergent - What you need to know
When you consider everything you have to worry about as a parent, washing baby clothes really shouldn’t be one! In the days before Nimble’s creation, our founder Von, struggled to find safe products for his baby niece’s skin.
Nimble was born through a real need for gentle cleaning and laundry products on delicate skin, but that actually did a good job! With this in mind, this week, we’re focusing on the laundry basket, and sharing what you need to know when it comes to using baby detergent.
Do we really need baby detergent?
So, do you really need to use different products to wash your baby’s clothes? We think the answer is yes, but not entirely! While the entire Nimble range is safe enough to use with your baby, we also recommend it for you!
You don’t need to buy different laundry detergents that will fill up your cupboard. You need just one bottle of Laundry Lover Non-Bio liquid detergent for the whole family.
That deals with the ‘no’ part of our answer. But, what about the ‘yes’ part? We do believe that the standard, harsher detergents used in some traditional detergents are unsuitable for use on your baby’s skin.The difference between your baby’s skin and yours
We recommend using a baby detergent to wash your baby’s clothes because whatever you put on the baby’s skin is absorbed into their body due to the thinness of their skin. So, it stands to reason that whatever detergent you use to wash your clothes will touch the skin afterwards and therefore be absorbed. And since your baby’s skin is quite different to yours, this can be a problem if you’re using a harsh detergent filled with chemicals.Baby skin is made up of much smaller cells than adult skin, and the collagen fibers are thinner too! Studies suggest the epidermis of a baby’s skin is 20% thinner than our own. This means that your baby’s skin is more susceptible to getting dry and irritated. In other words, your baby’s skin absorbs substances much easier than ours does.
The skin’s purpose overall is to act as a barrier, and the fact that your baby’s skin is thinner makes it easy to see why the things we use on their clothes need to be as gentle as possible. Products with harsh chemicals in their ingredients list are more likely to weaken the precious skin barrier, resulting in inflammations and allergies. Not good!
What to look for when you buy baby detergent
Look for as small an ingredients list as possible and always go for non-biological ones. Non-bio means that it doesn’t contain nasty chemicals that can leave a lot of residues on fabrics which then damage your baby’s skin.Always read the label to ensure the product is suitable for your baby. And if you’re not sure, reach out to the manufacturer (or us).
Want to learn more? We have another blog post specifically for this issue here: how to read cleaning labels.
Opt for more natural ingredients over chemicals. You might be surprised, but non-bio baby detergents can be powerful at cleaning too! We use just 13 ingredients in our Laundry Lover detergent when some heavy-duty counterparts can have up to 30! And it utilises the superpowers of coconuts and vegetables!
Another thing to watch out for is fragrance: when washing baby clothes, make sure to opt for an allergen-free fragrance or no fragrance detergent to avoid the risk of irritating delicate skins.
