“Have you ever used Jamaican blue soap?” my nanny asked me a few weeks ago while folding Kaia’s laundry.

She wasn’t surprised that my answer was no. “When I first saw Kaia’s burp cloths, I knew you didn’t have the blue soap,” she said, smirking. “The Jamaican blue soap is the secret to how I keep all my whites VERY WHITE!”

She’s not kidding. As soon as summer officially began with Memorial Day here, she’s worn an endless stream of white outfits to our home, and I can say without hesitation that her whites.. are blindingly WHITE. They legitimately all look brand new, as though she just purchased them the previous day. I don’t think anything I own is as white as any of her clothes. And well, I never really took the time to properly clean them outside of throwing them into the washing machine. She takes great pride in keeping her whites extremely white; she sets aside time every laundry day to separate out all her whites and hand scrub them with Jamaican blue soap before adding them to the washing machine.

We got some pretty annoying mango and apricot stains on the high chair straps (thanks, baby led weaning…), and our nanny worked her magic on them with the Jamaican blue soap and an old clean toothbrush. After seeing this, I decided to try this technique out using the blue soap on the mesh bassinet sides that Kaia used to lick constantly. These were heavily stained brownish grey. Well, this freaking soap worked: the brownish grey marks were completely gone.

This Jamaican blue soap really is magic. I suddenly got really excited, wondering what else I could use this magic soap on…