Do you remember Day 160, when I made my own laundry detergent? It’s working great! Fella and I are completely happy with how clean and fresh our clothes are getting! 🙂 What follows is an extension of my newly found DIY laundry products obsession.
A few months ago, a good pal of mine moved away. She didn’t want to deal with moving her cleaning supplies, so she kindly gave them all to me. There was just one thing that I really didn’t have a use for : a big jug of fabric softener. I only use dryer sheets, and Fella doesn’t use the stuff at all. It actually weakens the fibers in your clothing, but I hate static and I LOVE that fresh from the dryer smell! 🙂
Still on a DIY High from making my own laundry soap, I found this site that tells you how to make your own re-useable dryer sheets! They suggest using flannel scraps or any other really thick fabric. Other sites suggest using sponges. You can probably guess what I used. 😉
To make the solution for your dryer sheets, you’ll want to mix 4 T Fabric Softener with 10 T Water. It’ll look like this:
Next, toss those (clean) shoulder pads into the solution.
You’ll want to keep them in a water-tight container. I just used an old sour cream tub. It ain’t fancy, but it works! Northern Cheap$kate used an old baby wipes container, but I can’t justify having a child just so I can have a nifty re-useable container. 😉
Each pad is good for two uses. After that, just toss it in with a load of laundry and it can go back into the tub!
That’s it! Now I have reusable pads from supplies that otherwise wouldn’t have been of any use to me at all!
Of course, the cost of making my dryer sheets was $0, because I never had to pay for the bottle of fabric softener. If you actually bought the liquid fabric softener, your cost per load would come to 1 cent, vs. the 11 cents you were paying per load! Plus, you’re keeping all those little dryer sheets out of the landfill! 🙂
Cheers!
My mother-in-law is a found objects artist, and she uses her used dryer sheets in her art.
I know that I’m a little behind the times here, but I just found your blog a few weeks ago and have started at the beginning and steadily worked my way up. I just want to throw out a piece of dryer safety advice – you really can never be too careful with them. If you use dryer sheets, be sure to /really/ clean your lint trap every few months – not just removing the lint, or vacuuming the hoses, but actually /washing/ the mesh in the trap. The waxy feeling that fresh dryer sheets have leaves a water-tight, invisible, waxy build-up on the mesh of the lint trap that can cause the dryer to burn out, or even start a lint fire. The way to check is to put your lint trap under running water – if the water tends to pool and not go straight through the mesh, you’ve got the beginning of a srious problem. Clean the lint trap with warm soapy water and an old tooth brush or nylon dish brush until water goes straight through it. I don’t know if commercial fabric softener causes this same type of build up, but it’s better to check every so often to avoid costly problems in the future (at the very least to the machine, at the very worst your life…..)
You can also make your own fabric softener. Here is the recipe I found on pinterest…6 cups water, 3 cups white vinegar, 2 cups hair conditioner (whatever kind you want). Mix everything together in a one gallon container then STIR to combine, do NOT shake! Then you just use the same amount of your homemade fabric softener as you would the store bought. Or if you choose to just use in the dryer, soak your clean shoulder pads, sponges, wash clothes or whatever you choose and toss it in the dryer!
Also, just wanted to say, you are truly remarkable, brilliant, funny and an absolute delight! I love your blog and I have been spending the last week trying to catch up to your current refashions. You are so young to be such an inspiration! I think the future holds many wonderful things for you!
What a really cool idea!
Cool. I’ll do this too. I haven’t done the homemade laundry detergent yet because I still have some store bought, but I’ve already got the recipe and shopped for the best deal. Yeah! It feels good, like getting away with something. :-).
Brilliant – what a clever idea!