I’ve been doing a LOT of laundry this week washing blankets and comforters that I use in the bottom of our dog crates.  Blankets and comforters are quite bulky so I can only do a couple per load.  This adds up to a lot of time spent with the washer and dryer going as well as using a fair bit of detergent and dryer sheets.  A few months ago I started making my own laundry detergent, but still had a jumbo box of Bounce dryer sheets.  Yesterday I ran out of those and started my search for DIY dryer sheets.

Most of the DIY dryer sheet posts involved soaking bits of fabric (flannel, old towels, old t-shirts) in fabric softener.  I don’t use fabric softener, so I also needed to find a recipe for DIY fabric softener.  I found one where I had all the ingredients and combined a couple of Pinterest posts.

To make the fabric softener, I used a recipe from Thrifty, Crafty, Frugal.  I boiled 2 cups of water, combined that with 1 cup of white vinegar and added 2/3 cup of hair conditioner.  I don’t use conditioner regularly, but had a whole bottle under the sink in my bathroom.  It felt good to be finally using it for something.  I mixed these 3 ingredients in a mason jar, stirred until the conditioner was blended and then waited for the liquid to cool.

For my DIY dryer sheets, I found a post at Homemade Mamas.  I found an old t-shirt of Mike’s, cut it up with my pinking shears and fished a yogurt container out of the recycle bin.  I stuffed the yogurt container full of the 3″X5″ pieces of t-shirt and then filled the container with the cooled fabric softener.  The recipe said to let it sit for a couple of days, but I couldn’t wait, and ran a load this morning and it worked great.

I love how the sheets can just be put back in the yogurt container and soaked until the next time they’re needed.  I suppose over time, the fabric softener will get used up, but I think it’s going to be a very long while.  This project meets all my frugal, DIY, green requirements, was super easy to do.

I also whipped up a batch of laundry detergent.  If you’re doing the math, the last batch lasted me 84 days (almost 3 months) and that included giving away 4 quarts at Christmas.  Originally I had calculated that it would last twice as long (at least I would be doing half as many loads of laundry).  Apparently I do more laundry that I thought.  I don’t have any plans to give away any more (but will if the need arises), so this batch should last longer.  I still love the simple ingredients, the fresh smell and you can’t beat the price.

Here’s to fluffing and folding, 

“Thanks for washing our blankies.  It’s so nice to have something fresh and clean to curl up on (and in).”