I’ve been waiting to post this to decide on the verdict of my homemade dryer sheets. Well, after about a month, I’m pretty happy with them!
So why did I decide to make my own dryer sheets? I read something online about the regular Bounce sheets being absolutely horrible for you. Now, who knows if this is scientifically backed and true because nowadays it seems like everything is bad for you. But I did a little research online about making my very own re-useable dryer sheets and decided to give it a go.
But for this homemade dryer sheet to be successful, it had to eliminate static cling. I absolutely hate static! And since I have long hair, static cling means my hair makes that staticky sound against clothes. So that was my biggest concern of switching to a homemade alternative. But like I said, I’ve given it a month and don’t see any store bought chemical laden dryer sheets in my future!
All I used was an old white towel that I cut into smaller rectangular type shapes. Then I used an old large yogurt container (I save those! They can be used for lots of stuff!) and added in some good old fashioned white vinegar, tea tree oil and a citrus blend essential oil I had laying around from my body butter disaster! Remember that? 😦 It doesn’t need the citrus oil but I added it for additional scent. I swirled that around, added in the towel pieces and tried to stir all around to get as much of the towels soaked as I could. My towels didn’t get really all that soaked, just the ones on the bottom that really sucked up that vinegar mixture but after awhile of sitting inside the yogurt container with the lid on, all of them were damp. During my “research” some people said you needed to squeeze out all the liquid onto the other sheets in the container and then toss your sheet in the dryer. I didn’t have that problem since my sheets weren’t all that wet.
I put one “sheet” in with each load in the dryer and when it’s all done, I just take that sheet out, stuff it into the bottom of the container to try to get as much liquid on it as possible and close the lid.
Have I had any static? No. Do the clothes smell weird from the vinegar? No. In the last month, have I had to make another vinegar batch? No. Do I like my re-useable sheets? YES! So here’s the “recipe”.
- 1/2 c. white vinegar
- 10 drops tea tree essential oil
- 5 drops citrus blend essential oil (optional, for an added scent)
If you’d prefer your sheets to be more saturated, just double the recipe.
P.S. If you don’t have tea tree oil, GET IT! I started using it almost 4 years ago when lice started going around school. I heard that tea tree keeps those buggers away. And since there’s three girls and myself in this house, all with long hair, the last thing I wanted was a lice infestation. Every day before school, my kids dab a little tea tree oil around their hairline on the back of their necks and ears. Have we ever had lice? No! Knock on wood….