All you need to know is one word: google. All your questions will be answered and some you don't, like why you are posting an (affiliate) link to a product sale.
TL;DR: Kind of a pain in the ass to use for laundry, but cultural/traditional subcontinental thang for washing silk and hair (which have their similarities, y'know)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=soap+nuts+scam&t=ffnt&ia=web
Of course I had Googled. I'm here looking for suggestions from people who have used a product I want to try, but I'd rather not invest in something if it stinks. If you haven't used it, then feel free to proceed to the next thread.
Isn't that the whole point of these forums? Most of the questions here can be answered somewhat by Google, but we're here in a spirit of friendliness to help each other with nuances and lessons that can sometimes only be learned from experience.
I took out the affiliate link. I'm sorry it offends you so. To get a non-affiliate link I have to log out, reload the browser, find the right item again, and then the link is super-long unless I also want to use bit.ly. So I took the lazy way the first time and also disclosed my laziness. TL;DR: Lighten up.
Also, it seems easier to toss a few nuts in a bag that I can leave in the machine for 5 or 6 loads than to mix up a big, dusty batch of powder that looks like smoke billowing from my food processor and gets everywhere.
I've tried them; they didn't do much for me. But most natural laundry products don't do enough cleaning for us.
Thanks, poppan. We're generally not too hard on our clothes and like simple, environmentally friendly products when they do a good job.