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It’s worth noting that cat owners(at least, never had anything buts cats) should avoid certain essential oils, As our furry pals’ little organs aren’t equipped to process them, and they can easily be deadly!
@pseudo@jlai.lu, saw you mention essential oils too, just a PSA.
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.
Most of that tide jug is water.
Yeah, which is why I added the note about cleaning power per unit volume. But it’d have to be a fair bit more powerful to make the effort worth it, I think.
We use maybe 50ml of Tide (so that’d be probably 100 loads) when doing our laundry, so if that’s equivalent to like one tablespoon of the Borax mix, I could see it saving me $20 or so overall, if it’s three times stronger.
So it’d come down to how much time I spend shopping and combining the mixture vs just buying it.
Mind, that’s just the borax. Bar soap and baking soda are cheap but not free.
(edit: and before someone jumps on me about “baking soda”, I was thinking of it in terms of decomposing it into carbonate in the oven. I haven’t priced out washing soda)
‘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.
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.
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 took that stuff too (aka accutane). Severest depression I’ve ever experienced but I’m thankful to only get the occasional acne as an adult now.
I knew /r/nopoo was a lie!
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.
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 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.
Fabric softener is great. Mix a bit with water and use it to clean your shower glass doors/walls. It removes limescale like a charm thanks to the anionic surfactants that are in there. And the Aldi store brand costs hardly anything.
It’s worse. Fabric softener is composed of an anti static oil. When you run it in the laundry, it coats all of your clothes with a very thin layer of oil.
Which is why towels dried with fabric softener and dryer sheets don’t absorb water anywhere near as well as plain towels dried without it!!
My mom complained to me for years that I wasn’t “doing it right” by not using fabric softener. But her towels are useless compared to mine! She continues to spends $100/ year on fabric softener while on social security. Over the year she has spent thousands and thousands of $$$. 🤦♀️
yup, I kept finding these weird stains on our clothes and figured out it was from the fabric softener sheets, stopped using them immediately. Can’t even tell the difference tbh
I keep having to tell family to stop using dryer sheets on at least the towels. If they want to use them on anything else, whatever, their clothes. But god damn stop making the towels bad!!
Not only that, some people (including myself) are sensitive to the oils used. Having underwear that actively makes you itchy sucks. I switched to wool dryer balls and never looked back
If there was a Lemmy community for fighting or complaining the use of useless fragrance, I would join it right now.
Let’s make !nofragrance real !I did an allergy patch test a few years back. Besides the allergies, I came back as sensitive to fragrance. I try to stick to products on that safe list. But it’s very difficult.
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Gen X here, I only use unscented dryer sheets because if I don’t I will get shocked a lot. My apartment is great because the humidity is super low in the winter, but clothing hurts. Humidifier doesn’t work because if I don’t use distilled water everything gets a rust color on it. Also I’d be going through a gallon of distilled water a day. I can’t afford that, but I sure as heck can afford a big box of unscented dryer sheets that solves my problem.
Wool balls do not work with synthetics.
Synthetics are terrible anyway
Cotton fibers from repeated washes and clothing waste are also terrible though. In my case, one pair of synthetic outdoor or workout pants lasts over a decade while a pair of cotton jeans or khakis has the crotch chewed out within months. As far as I understand the math on the environmental impact, it’s more about using the same items for as long as possible than what material those items are.
Cheap ones, yep.
You can just use white vinegar instead of fabric softener. It’s significantly cheaper, can be used for other non-laundry things, eliminates odors, and doesn’t gum up your washing machine with residue.
Is there anything vinegar can’t do?!? Between white and apple cider vinegar, I feel like they cover so many areas of cleaning and household stuff.
Vinegar ain’t basic, that’s for sure.
Further advice, don’t use a lot of it. You’ll see videos on youtube of people pouring like three cups of vinegar in their washing machine, don’t do that. You only need a splash of it. If you use too much, the acid will eat away at the rubber gaskets and shit
You definitely don’t need that much vinigar. That said most new washing machine are using a chemical resistant silicone or TPE instead of more traditional rubber compound. This eliminated the already miniscule risk of acid damaging the seals.
If you add 3 cups(about 700 mL) of standard 5% acetic acid bleach to 4 gallons of water(~ 15000 mL) you end up with a 0.2% acetic acid you will end up with a pH of something like 5.5 or about the pH of healthy skin. A lot of HE washers will use a 5 gallon initial wash so it’s likely to be even gentler than what I came up with in my rough napkin math guesstamate.
While I agree with the general sentiment, the vinegar won’t be released and diluted until later in the load, so it sits in its full 5% acetic acid glory for quite a while.
Most(maybe all) HE washers don’t have mechanical flaps that hold back the liquids, they sit in plastic cups that empty by an overflow or auto syphon system when water comes out of a tube located above that tub or cup. It’s a fancy plastic cup. Every plastic common to appliance manufacturing is resistant to 5% acetic acid. Chemical resistance of plastics chart
I just looked at the fabric softener cup in my washer, it’s HDPE(high density polyethylene). If you look at that chart you will see polyethylene is resistant to even concentrated acetic acid. The plastic bottle the vinigar comes in is made from a lower density polyethylene.
By the time the vinigar leaves the cup is already being diluted by the fill water causing it to overflow or start the auto syphon. It will not damage your washer, but even if it did, you can buy replacements for the entire soap tray for relatively little online. The same can be said for most other appliance parts with the notable exceptions being large motors and some brands control boards. There are tons of write ups, tutorials and videos on how to fix broken appliances and replace parts.
Yes, I was just being pedantic. Sorry to have triggered such an involved response, but thanks for all the information! From what I understand this is more of a problem in dishwashers, if you want to use it as rinse aid.
No worries, I am a fan of pedantry. The amount of involved in the response was just me getting mentally stuck in a washing machine hole.
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.
Yea, making your own laundry detergent from grated soap and borax seems like something people with money do to convince themselves they’re frugal. When in reality, there is no way in hell you’re 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.
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.
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.
Some people will literally discard economies of scale just to be sanctimonious.
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
Fabric softener is sometime useful for very hard water. You don’t have to buy it, though. You can use white vinegar to soften the water to actually soften the fabric mix in a big container one part white vinegar to one part sodium bicarbonate. Wait for it to stop foaming. Add four drops of essential oils per liter of mixture. Stir. Allow to rest a few hour before using. You can make big quantity ahead of time as long as your container is big enough for the big foam of the big batch.
Speaking of hard water, I recently installed a water conditioner/descaler instead of replacing my dead water softener. It’s an electronic device that mounts on the water supply pipe, and uses a couple of wire coils to create an electric field that makes the calcium ions in the hard water stick to each other instead of pipes and fixtures. I was skeptical, because the description of how it works sounds a lot like many woo-woo devices that use “magnetic fields” to do… something. But I read up on water descalers, and all of the information that I found was very straightforward, listing the pro’s and con’s of descalers versus softeners.
And it works! I checked the water utility reports for the wells which serve my area, and found that they’re all “very hard,” but quite low on manganese. Therefore, I don’t mind that the minerals stay in the water; they just go down the drain instead of building up on things. It’s actually starting to dissolve the scale buildup on my faucets, slowly. No need for vinegar to have soft fabric out of the laundry, either. I like that it descales all of the water in the house, so I don’t have to bother about which is softened and which is not. It was also cheaper than a water softener, and I don’t have to buy salt regularly. Also, it’s an older house with galvanized pipes, which soft water will corrode.
Anyway, random aside on hard water.
Very interesting. Thank you for the advice (^_^)
Nobody’s mentioend laundry detergent sheets yet? Super cheap. I buy the Poesie brand. 160 sheets in a box for $9.49. That’s just under 6¢ per load. For my two loads of laundry per week, a box lasts me a year and a half.
Bonus: the box takes up almost no space, 6" x 5" x 3".
Also, white vinegar is an awesome replacement for fabric softener!
“Detergent sheets”, “dryer sheets”, it’s like you’re in a different world with these fantastically strange single-use products :D
They look like a tissue made of rough fiber, do they dissolve or do you have to throw them away after usage? Either way it seems less practical than just adding a bit of powder, but what do I know :)
Another replacement for fabric softener is hair conditioner (diluted with water so it runs better). I only use it when washing polyester fleece, since that gets fiercely static, so it’s nice to be able to use a product we already have at home.
Detergent sheets completely dissolve in the wash.
Single-use? I mean … sure? I guess? The same way a scoop of detergent powder is single-use.
But won’t that make your clothes smell like vinegar?
How much do you imagine should be used per load?
1/2 gallon
Are you trying to pickle your clothing?
You only need 1/4 Cup…
I’m not sold on that homemade detergent. Soap tends to leave insoluble residue, especially when you have hard water. There is a reason why almost everything uses synthetic detergents (though it might also be because those are cheap).
Yeah, I’ve never understood the point in using a different soap as the base of a different soap. I make my own laundry soap out of basic shit I get from Walmart, and it works great.
Is it actually cheaper than buying dry detergent for cheap?
Good question, but I’ll admit I’ve not actually run the exact figures. I’m actually doing this for health reasons rather than monetary, since one of my partners is allergic tio life.
But to your question,I might have spent the cost of 1.5 large boxes of laundry detergent ($30) for the 4 items that go into it (Baking soda,Epson salt,washing soda,sea salt), but given the fact I can buy in bulk, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being cheaper. In the last 6mo I’ve made the laundry soap twice and haven’t put a huge dent in my ingredient stock. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I get more than 200 washes out of the base ingredients, which would definitely be more economical than the premade stuff.
That homemade laundry soap made with bar soap would be a nightmare in hard water. I don’t even want to think about soap scum in the drains and in my clothes.
I just use the smallest amount of detergent I can get out of the bottle, that works well. And don’t wash a garment after wearing it once if it’s not underwear. Invested in a lot of Merino stuff which manages to be comfortable even here in Florida and doesn’t stink ever. I can wear those shirts and just hang them back up.
I was with you until the wool in Florida. I lived in FL almost my entire life and there were times I’d have taken off my skin Hellraiser-style just to be less hot
In my opinion the only times I’m ever uncomfortably hot is when I’m choosing voluntarily to be in the sun. For example going to beach.
99% of the time I’m in 67 degree AC in a hoodie lol
67F would have cost me a fortune in FL. For some reason, super tall cathedral ceilings are common in FL homes, making cool costs even higher.
i think it’s cause 2 story homes are much less common here compared to up north
i live in a pretty new apartment building and the AC/insulation is very efficient. although to be honest I don’t even know what I pay in power, my girlfriend usually pays that one
My previous home in FL was two stories and I would nearly always break $300 for power for the hotter half of the year until I got solar panels, and that was with the A/C set to 78F, and I did not have a particularly large home. A newer apartment would definitely had an advantage on that front since you’re surrounded by other units.
Admittedly I run cool, was born here. But ride to work in the Merino wool t-shirts from Unbound or silk/Merino thin knit sweater and also merino socks, and arrive absolutely presentable, so much better than cotton, not better than linen, but better looking for an office. Only the v-neck though, can’t stand it near my neck, that does itch. And not all brands, only Unbound for the T-shirts. Silk/Merino blend always rocks.
Honestly at a loss here. The title references fabric softener, but the content relates more specifically to DIY laundry detergent while only mentioning that softener makes clothes more vulnerable to wear & tear. What’s the nitty-gritty on the fabric softener? Does it actually damage clothing in some way?
As geek analogy, is it like the subatomic bacteria that starts destroying the Klingon ship in Star Trek: the Next Generation S2E8’s “A Matter Of Honor”, or does it just make the material more susceptible to tearing?
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/how-do-fabric-softeners-work.html
It was created so that when you dried clothes outside (especially cotton) they didn’t get crunchy. The fibers tend to freeze an interlock microscopically when they dry. It coats the fibers and makes them not stick together.
When mechanical dryers became the norm, they needed a new reason, so the called out static. And in some climates, dryer static can be a bit of a pain. Dryer balls supposedly help with this, but I can’t find any reasonable data to back that up, and that’s just the kind of thing we’re confirmation bias over.
Softener can/will build up on the fabric. It can discolor bright whites.
I think the worst of it is:
- if you use it on towels or anything meant to absorb water, it seriously dampens that ability
- it builds up in the nooks and crannies of the washer and it’s hard to clean off,
- it’s expensive
- for mechanical drying in moderate climates, it does little more than add smell.
- some people have allergenic reactions to it
Dryer balls supposedly help with this
From what I’ve heard, dryer balls help the drying process by warming up faster than the wet clothes and drying from inside the pile. And even if that turns out to have been misinformation, I’m not too annoyed by it because it’s a single low-cost expense whereas dryer sheets are consumables
Yup, I saw a reasonably well-conducted study that verified they decrease dryer time.
So I live in a super dry climate. I’ve gotten static shocks that leave my hand numb (not from the laundry, taking off layers while wearing rubber boots) because it’s just that dry here.
Dryer balls don’t work for static in my experience. Put a couple pins in it? That didn’t work. Dryer sheets are pretty much the only thing that actually cuts it as far as I can tell.
You are correct. Only way to remove static is dryer sheets.
But dryer sheets soften and reduce static. I have never had that with dryer balls. While they do fluff of and make softer, then never remove the static.
Let me ask you this: is static that big of a problem?
I only have it happen for 1/10 of my loads in the winter due to low humidity. And the only things affected are my bedsheets
warming up faster than the wet clothes and drying from inside the pile
not sure how true this is, but they do help dry clothes faster because they’re knocking everything around more which distributes the air/heat better
Yes. As I understand it, fabric softener softens the fabrics. Obviously. Which makes them more prone to ripping, tearing, and just deteriorating faster. In addition to being another cost, both financial & possibly environmental, it’s plain unnecessary.
I buy some really nice clothing & I want my clothes to last as long as possible. Most of my clothing takes a long time to wear out. My recipe for success for the last 10 years is precisely as follows:
I have a frontloading washing machine, which uses far less water & it doesn’t have an agitator screw thing in the middle that grabs your wet clothes (clothing is weakest when it’s wet). I button & zip my pants, and anything else with a zipper like a jacket, so the zippers aren’t attacking clothes during the wash cycle. Nice clothing, I turn inside-out to preserve designs or outward-facing fabric. I use the ECOS greywater friendly laundry detergent from Costco, and I just use more of it like I dump a full cap or 1.5 caps per load. In case it’s not as effective as conventional, just use more. Plus 1 scoop OxiClean (idk the greywater/waste impact of OxiClean; I’m convinced it’s a powerful multipurpose cleaning agent that is gentle on clothing).
All clothing is treated the same, whites & brights & colors & blacks, all get washed together, I couldn’t care less. Run washer on Tap Cold, Extra High Spin, Heavy Soil level every time. No matter the load. So my washer works extra hard to gently wash my clothing & then wring nearly all the water out of it. The harder you run the washer, the less work is done by the dryer, which save you electric/gas & is gentler on your clothes.
Then my athletic gear, wool socks, and denims never go into the dryer, I let those air dry. The rest is gently run through the dryer & “it is what it is”, it’s mostly stuff that doesn’t really matter.
It takes longer to write out than to do, you can see, it’s quite expedient. I don’t separate. I dump a lot of simple, gentle detergents in. Wash when dirty, wring out water, dryer if necessary. I’m telling you: my clothes last a very long time. Less is more.
Sound habits, these. Except for the front-loader, and Oxiclean, it sounds like we’re on the same page. Aside from these strategies, I figure that the quality of the clothes, and having kept all synthetics out of my dresser/closet have helped to lengthen the life of my clothing as well.
