Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Homemade Fabric Softener (not!)

My dryer has been imparting a lot of static to my clothes, so I started my laundry make-my-own at static. Fair warning: all attempts so far have been failures.

  1. Commercial dryer sheets are so scented that I sneeze just getting one out! I tried making my own dryer sheets by soaking a piece of fleece in a solution of 1 part fabric softener to 6 parts water, and that worked but the fabric softener is itself commercial (same goes for using hair conditioner instead of fabric softener). This approach is also still scented, so not what I wanted.
  2. I tried using 2 Tbs of white vinegar in my washer's rinse cycle, but my clothes and especially towels smelled too strongly of vinegar for me. Yes, even with essential oils.
  3. Adding more baking soda than usual didn't seem to make a difference to static cling either.
  4. Since vinegar contains acetic acid, and baking soda is mildly alkaline, I don't think a mixture of vinegar and baking soda will be effective for very long after the first mixing. (I didn't try it, though. Sodium acetate might be great, but it might still have the vinegar smell. I didn't want to use more vinegar, and want to re-wash laundry. Again.)
  5. Finally, I tried crumpled aluminum foil in my dryer. It got very smoothly rounded in the dryer, but that's the only change I noticed.

That covers the suggestions at ThiftyFun as well as the extra foil one from lifehacker, but I do have another one to try that I hope will work.

Update: I tried the other idea, epsom salt, but it didn't reduce static for me. Looking at what Wikipedia lists for antistatic agents, I'm not hopeful to reproduce that with home chemistry.

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