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I’m not convinced about the cost. A kilogram of borax seems to run about $10CAD. 2 cups, at 1.7g/CC, would be about 850g, so $7 just for the Borax. Unless there’s a much cheaper place to get it…
A ~5L jug of Tide costs $31, or about $6/L. If they have approximately equivalent cleaning power per volume, Tide wins.
Awfullydull and I are now best friends, I’ve been saying the same about dryer sheets for YEARS now
FUCK DRYER SHEETS pointless ass waste of money
My MIL swears that dryer sheets are good for cleaning baseboards. You take one and rub it on a baseboard and some how dust just… avoids those annoying little nooks and crannies. I haven’t had to clean them again in literal years, but thats the only good use I’ve heard for dryer sheets. It’s a hack on a tiny task I never take time to care about really, not sure if that in anyway justifies the existence of dryer sheets, but there you go.
What’s a dryer sheet? I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.
A microplastic rag dipped in PFAS.
I’m talking out of my ass bc I don’t use them either, but I’d wager a buck my description isn’t that far off.
You put them in your clothes dryer to make everything smell like chemical clean and make them a little softer. And reduce static? I think? They give me a rash, personally.
Literally just a thin disposable sheet of fabric impregnated with fabric softener that you throw in the dryer with your clothes. The idea is that it’s supposed to make your clothes feel softer, smell better, and reduce static electricity. Waste of money and material, just throw a damn tennis ball in there
Yeah I’m not putting all that effort and potentially ruining my washing machine to save me a few cents per wash. That seems ridiculous.
You don’t even have to buy the fancy, expensive, in a pod detergent or anything, considering they always contain the same stuff that comes in a box/bottle. Just buy whatever’s cheap.
Not just the effort, but by the time you buy all those ingredients, you’re probably paying more than you would for normal laundry detergent.
And if you use Dr. Bronner’s bar soap as recommended, you’ll be paying out the ass.
Not to mention the gas to go to the three separate stores you probably need to buy that shit from.
Eh, all of that stores really well, so buy in bulk.
Yea, making your own laundry detergent from grated soap and borax is something people with money do to convince themselves theyre frugal. When in reality there is no way in hell youre making a commodity cheaper than GreatValue ™
Yeah, the cheap standard powder detergent would probably be less expensive. The volume you’d need to make to beat it is huge. Like, maybe five years’ worth.
I am also laughing at making washing powder in the oven to save money. The amount you’d spend on electricity would put you in the red, unless you live in a petrostate with free electricity or something.
The amount of free time you’d have to have, as well, to even consider baking the powder for an hour per round to make it usable… After a certain point my time is valuable to me and I’d rather just pay a dollar or two extra to not have to worry about all this mess.
Indeed. Or working for prison slave wages.
Lol yeah I didn’t even consider that. At this point it almost feels like some of that has to be trolling. Either that or there is a large detergent hobbyist community out there that I have just not been aware of.
It also makes the clothes extremely flammable.
My favorite is the Tide Free and Clear commercial where the kid goes “look dad, it’s just as clean but without any of the chemicals that harm me!” They’re literally admitting their core product contains harmful chemicals yet people are still buying it!
Isn’t detergent incredibly cheap though? I always buy the cheapest per weight Aldi stock. I think we may have spent less than £5 on it in the past year. Never bought fabric conditioner, wtf would I want that for, deliberately make my towels less absorbent and more flammable?
Are all your clothes towels? Just don’t use it when you wash your towels lol
I often wash towels with other things though. It would be rather wasteful to run a second load just for towels.
I use soap nuts for washing and vinegar as the softener. It comes out perfectly clean but has a neutral smell (which might smell weird when you first start doing this). I sometimes add a tiny bit of store bought softener to the vinegar for stuff like more expensive hoodies and tshirts.
The only reason why clothes get staticky in the dryer is because of the heat. If you run the dryer for 10-20min after drying with no heat they’ll come out without a trace of static.
Ive stopped using softener and dryer sheets a while ago; just detergent and for the first load of the week (usually towels) a short cycle with vinegar to clear up any mineral deposits left by my horribly bad hard water.
You don’t need dryer sheets if you’re hang drying your clothes, which reduces wear on the clothes and uses less energy, along with requiring one less appliance, unless you have a combo washer/dryer.
I started hang drying my clothes maybe 4 years ago and I’m definitely not going back
I’ve been hang drying for a decade. Moved house recently, treated myself to a dryer. My god clothes feel so much softer now. Especially towels.
Yeah, I hang dry most of my clothes, but I use a dryer for towels because they get really coarse otherwise, and bed sheets because I don’t really have somewhere to hang them
For me, nothing beats clothes hung dry that have been drying in the sun. It has its own unique smell to them.
Been using a set of wool dryer balls from Trader Joe’s for years. Haven’t had to use fabric softener at all.
You don’t need to go up to 400°F to decompose baking soda into washing soda. Decomposition starts around 122⁰F (50⁰C) and is complete at around 250⁰F
details
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bicarbonate
Heating to transform (baking soda) sodium bicarbonate into (washing soda) sodium carbonate does remove moisture but also removes carbon dioxide :
When sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) is heated, it undergoes a decomposition reaction to form sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), water (H2O), and carbon dioxide (CO2).
The reaction can be represented as :
2NaHCO3 + heat → Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2I also wonder about the cost of using the oven, and whether it’s cheaper than just buying washing soda.
P = = oven average power ~1kW=1/1000MW
C = = electricity cost ~50 to 200 $/MWh
Δt = = process time duration ~1.0h
Total = P x C x Δt
… so, a few cents maximum, right ?
… it’s more the time and effort you put in !When you put it that way, it’s not nearly as expensive as I thought.
You can also do it in a pan on the stove top. Basically just heat up the baking soda over medium-ish heat. Once it gets hot enough, it’ll “bubble” as the carbon dioxide and water is driven off as gas. Once it stops “bubbling”, it’s done. It’s a bit faster than the oven method, but it’s more active since you have to stir it regularly.
You can also weigh the powder before and after heating it to see if it’s fully covered to washing soda. The resulting washing soda should weigh about 1/3 less than the starting amount of baking soda.
Want to add in here, that some washing mechanics can’t hand the homemade detergent mix. I’ve damaged one or two with the mix. Not entirely sure as to the reason, but I believe it has something to do with the grated soap bar clogging something somewhere.
Wonder if you could powder it somehow.
Small batches in an old blender. Grated soap mixed with you washing soda, borax or whatever else you are using as a booster. The powders will coat the soap as it gets cut apart and keeping it from clumping back together.
This is hard on a blender so do smaller batches (and don’t use a good blender. Get one from goodwill or the like for ~ 10 bucks}. It will also produce very fine airborne power when you open the blender. I promise you that you don’t want strong alkaline powers in your lungs, and even if you do it will make the air taste terrible. Do this in a well ventilated place, use PPE, and be careful. I find that after you powder it, the soap in the mixture holds on to the other ingredients and keep them from becoming airborne.
Also use a laundry soap bar, the soap is often stronger so you can use less and it doesn’t have ingredients to moisturizer or make the soap easy on the skin. Those often contribute to buildup issues.
I wrote up a big rant with detailed instructions on how to remove residue from washers. A clean washer performed better and it’s over of the reasons people get a new washer and it ends up cleaning much better.
EDIT: a link to my washer cleaning and residue removal rant
‘Most millennials aren’t buying enough of our shit and that’s a HUGE PROBLEM that all of you definitely care about!’
That’s some pretty useful advice in the comments tho. But also I’m 52 years old and have literally never used fabric softener in my life and have no idea what it’s supposed to be for other than making companies like Proctor & Gamble even more money.
Also, another handy tip: ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ is bullshit, unless you have really thick or really oily hair and don’t wash regularly, you don’t need to wash it twice, the shampoo company just wants you to buy more. Same with fill marks in a washing machine, unless you’re doing a huge load there’s no reason to fill it all the way up.
I learned that from Lizzie McGuire. Ethan Craft, the character frequently noted to have amazing hair, calls the “lather, rinse, repeat” thing a marketting trick.
Was “lather, rinse, repeat” an advertising jingle or something for you guys, or do you just all get taught to wash your hair twice?
It was on the instructions on the bottles and IIRC in the ads for the major brands too.
and don’t wash regularly
Even washing hair regularly is a scam. If you wash once a week your hair will be fine. It’ll look like shit for a few weeks until your scalp gets the message that you aren’t stripping away all the natural oils still and that it can cut back on oil production but afterwards your hair will be healthier.
Apple cider vinegar and tea tree oil baby. (I am not a gross hippy, shampoo dries the f out of my hair and Ive gone no shampoo for ~10 years)
Your hair isn’t left smelling of the vinegar after?
It rinses out really well, and the tea tree oil is used to negate any residual smell
Main reason I do vinegar is because it strips out maybe 60-70% of the oils vs shampoo
I’m sorry to have to say, but the idea of “hair training” is a myth.
The oil glands (which are known as sebaceous glands, and produce an oil called “sebum”) are controlled by genetics, hormones, and stress. Sebaceous glands don’t have any sort of “sensor” to tell them when to produce more/less oil, so washing or not washing won’t make a difference.
Thank you. I have extra oily hair so if I skip washing it even a single day it starts to look like I’m using pomade, and whenever I tell people this they always insist I should just wash it once a week and my head will “adjust.”
I am the exact same, friend. My hair becomes a big oil slick after only a day without washing and it’s really obvious. Which is part of why this particular myth bothers me so much.
First, as teens, we had uninformed randos without oily skin telling us to heal our acne problems by putting nonsense like toothpaste and silly putty on our faces. Now, those same uninformed, non-oily randos tell us that our greasy hair can be solved by not washing it.
But my dermatologist was right about the acne care they recommended, I’m inclined to trust them about my scalp care too.
Yep, I had really bad acne when I was younger and the only thing that worked was isotretinoin, which is rough. My lips cracked and bled while I was taking that but when I was finished the acne was gone.
They made me pledge not to get pregnant while taking it despite the fact that I don’t have a uterus, lol.
I knew /r/nopoo was a lie!
100%.
Use a shampoo that has aloe as the primary ingredient as well. Can comfortably make it a week and half before it looks gnarly.
Routinely get complimented on it so I know its not nasty.
I’m a head-sweater so when I work out my hair gets as wet as it would in the shower. I’m not gonna leave it like that, it’ll be stinky.
Yes, not all advice/recommendations apply to everyone. Specifically: our bodies vary quite a bit and they also change over time.
Huh, I didn’t know that. But I mean I gotta shower every couple of days at most anyway or I feel gross, so might as well.
Oh, I shower every day with soap. I just don’t wash my hair every day. I also feel gross without a shower.
Soap is also not great for your skin; you don’t need to soap up more than your armpits and underwear area.
Hair training is a myth, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
Duly noted, thanks.
This is true, but greasy hair looks greasy and makes your pillow smell bad which impacts your ability to fall asleep.
Like sure, it’s not natural to wash your hair every 2/3 days, but imo it’s worth it
No, your hair stops becoming greasy. That’s the point. It gets that way because you’re stripping the oils, so it produces more to replinish it. If you stop then your scalp eventually adjusts and stops producing much oil.
People think greasy hair is just what happens, but no. It’s what happens when you’ve been stripping your hair dry for years and your scalp is trying it’s best to fix the problems you’re causing. Stop causing problems and it’ll normalize.
I wash with water frequently, but when I really need a good clean I wash with conditioner. The oils bind and are removed but your hair will be refreshed. I rarely wash with shampoo, for years at this point, and my hair isn’t greasy. It just feels healthy.
I can assure you my gf and I both nvalidated this assumption during the covid19 lockdown. I have a friend who has thick grey hairs and he never washes his hair. I guess we are all different on that matter because I can’t even skip a single day (it gets scratchy and my skin starts to fall appart), as others testified in the comments.
It’s what happens when you’ve been stripping your hair dry for years and your scalp is trying it’s best to fix the problems you’re causing. Stop causing problems and it’ll normalize.
Please do explain how an exocrine gland on the scalp is supposed to know how much oil is on a strand of dead hair cells, located inches away from the skin?
I think that it’s because the scalp itself gets dried out from too much washing, so the glands respond to that.
When the scalp skin “normalizes” the hair slowly normalizes as well, since the oil travels down the strands.
That’s my guess. I went from shampooing daily to every other day and at first I would get an itchy, gummy scalp. But eventually that gummyness worked it’s way out. Every time I shampooed I would get that dry, gummy scalp the next day.
So eventually I shampooed less and less. Now I don’t shampoo at all. I just rinse daily with water and massage my scalp.
Cotton and mostly-cotton blends don’t get that much static but nylon, polyester, and bamboo/rayon/microfiber make sparks. If you’re trying to wash pet hair out of something, the softener can help it let go. Although, before you wash, try using a squeegee or a silicone bowl-scraper to remove most of the hair.
I’ve had a box of fabric sheets for a decade or so cause my mom got them for me when she house sat, and I didn’t have any. I sometimes use em if there are sparks when I pull something out of the dryer, and i don’t forget i have them.
I gotta wash mine twice(when i do wash it), but that’s because of the extra oils I put in my hair. The first wash absorbs so much of the oil it won’t really even lather.
Obvious solution seems to be to put less oil in your hair? shrug
Then it doesn’t look right. Obvious solution is to just wash my hair twice. So obvious it’s what I do and it works great.
I’ve literally never put oil in my hair in my life (tho now I say that I dunno if shampoo/conditioner has oil in it. Probably.) It’s looked fine this whole time.
I’ve probably had pretty long hair for longer than you’ve been alive. If you have long hair and wanting it to look not crazy without tying it up, you’re putting something in it. Whether it’s leave in conditioner, or fiber or pomade or gel or hairspray or some type of oil or you manage to skip all that by straightening it all the time; you’re putting something in it or doing something to it. Very few people have an exception to this. Namely people who have very straight, limp hair.
I’m in my 50s so color me skeptical on that count, but fair enough. ;) But yeah, I’ve never been able to grow my hair out and keep it that way even though I do have very straight, limp hair just because it was always a pain to wash and care for and I just didn’t care enough.
It reduces static and leaves behind a film that makes things feel softer. It ruins towels because of this.
I use dryer sheets for static. shrug
Dryer sheets will ruin your towels too, just toss some wool balls in the dryer.
How so?
It coats your towels with a light film that makes them less absorbent.
Same thing just with more waste
I can’t imagine baking baking soda in an oven is cheaper than just buying washing soda? They’re both sold in similar size bags (1kg) for similar prices in my area (€9-€10). Seems like a waste of energy to buy the wrong type of carbonate.
It might depend on the size of the household, and the volume produced at any one time. If you make a gigantic batch that will last 1+ year(s), it might be a cost-saver, but who knows?
Some people will literally discard economies of scale just to be sanctimonious.
The amount at Costco is about 5lbs, so that is more than the 2.2lbs y’all are talking about.
also, soooo many people will just ignore power usage bills, which can be quite substantial in some areas. Running my oven for an hour straight is not exactly cheap
UK person: dryer?
Yeah, dryers themselves are a waste of both money and energy.
Depends. They do save on space, which is why it’s so weird that most US people have them and europeans who generally have much smaller homes usually don’t.
My drying rack takes a bit of room for 24h every 2 weeks and folds to non-existence between loads, so I don’t really share that logic.
Plus, it does not try to compete with my water tank on electricity consumption.
IDK your living situation, but that “bit of room” might be a lot in smaller homes. My first room as a college student wouldn’t even fit a full-size drying rack, and it was definitely in the way in most of my places since then. And it’s going to be a lot more often than once every 2 weeks if there’s more than one inhabitant, and depending on what how thick the clothes are and the air humidity, 24h is not enough to dry everything.
I think family size is the kicker. My kids are really active and exploratory. So residue and odor leaves me needing to do multiple loads a week. I know scientifically when it comes to bacteria and odor I could do the deep freeze/freezer thing…but I just can’t.
There are some items we have to hang dry. Those I can keep on the one hanging rack. If I did it for everything though my 3-4 loads a week means my office/desk/craft space is now basically permanently occupied by laundry. Summer is more feasible…that’s only three months of consitent +13 C for my area though. :'(
How does having this massive machine save you space compared to a bit of string?
The machine takes only about half as much space as the rack and it’s easily stackable with a washing machine.
edit: I think you were actually referring to a clothesline instead of a rack? I never had a place to actually put up a clothesline, where do you put that? Straight through your bedroom?
If you want a rack you can get collapsible clothes drying racks that just fold up to almost nothing. As far as a washing line, put it up anywhere, just need 2 hooks. Usually dry stuff outside on a line other than in winter, could have a few lines across the kitchen to hang stuff from if you wanted.
Whilst I’d prefer not to have to hang my laundry I’m not willing to pay for that much electricity, particularly as I keep my shirts on hangers, so it’s literally a case of moving them from one rack to another.
Welsh person: no dryer?
(For our foreign friends - it rains eight days a week here…)
I’m on the southern coast of Wales. I have a dehumidifier.
That just seems like a heat pump dryer with extra steps.
It helps my laundry dry and keeps the house from feeling damp too. Nothing like high relative humidity inside a house to make the cold cling to the skin!
