Borax gives me rashes, but I’ve used laundry bar soap or just the super sensitive skin liquid stuff. I use vinegar instead of name brand fabric softener because it’s cheaper and the other stuff gives me a rash. Nearly all of the store bought laundry stuff gives me rashes.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
1588 points (100.0% liked)
Curated Tumblr
5370 readers
4 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Here are some OCR tools to assist you in transcribing posts:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/[email protected]: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If you have a problem with limestone in your water you can use the cheapest vinegar you can find and add it to the washing machine to make your clothes smoother.
Vinegar is also great at getting smells out of stuff. It's excellent for animal smells. I use a little in each load of laundry because my fave hobby is doing stuff with horses and I also have a beagle with a natural hound stink. It gets out all the animal stank and a 2 gallon jug costs $3 at the local dollar store.
I also used the stuff to deep clean my carpets to help out a disabled cat I owned. He had trouble determining where the litter box was because he was blind and brain damaged and the person who was in my house before me didn't clean up after their cats. Most of the smell was gone, but just enough was there to confuse my boi.
10/10 recommend vinegar.
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
All ot does is make the fabric soft? Are yall wearing potatoes sacks?
load more comments
(14 replies)
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
How do I make my own fabric softener tho? One of the things it does is condition the fabric like you condition your hair, to keep its strength and retain its shape. Like if your shirt's neck has become a little stretched out, wash it with some fabric softener and it usually fixes that shit.
I'd DIY my own if I could. I'll probably start using this detergent recipe, too.
load more comments
(2 replies)
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
UK person: dryer?
Welsh person: no dryer?
(For our foreign friends - it rains eight days a week here...)
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
I've not used fabric softener or any other substitute for whatever it does in like 10 years. Can't tell what problem I'm supposed to be having that it supposedly solves.
I actually stopped using it because the dryers at my crappy old laundromat tended to overheat and it would occasionally melt the fabric softener sheets and it smelled utterly horrible and left burnt on patches of fabric softener on my clothes. So I figured it was no longer worth the cost, and then I noticed I couldn't even tell what the benefit was. It was just a thing my mom told me to do and I never questioned it.
What's a dryer sheet, I'm nearly 40 and I've never heard of that
It's a sheet of chemicals that makes your clothes smell better.
Downside is it adds a sort of...coating to clothing which for some types of clothing, like wicking sports apparel, makes them less effective.
They're absolutely useless and when I learned that I stopped using them and there was literally no negative change in my post-laundry output.
That makes me think of crockpot liners, which are apperently a thing
Like, you cook your food, in the plastic. The most pointless thing I've seen.
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
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
load more comments
(4 replies)
Haven’t used it for years
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.
Fabric softener kills elastic and lots of clothes (including even jeans) have elastic in them. Yeah, you can do separate washes, but ain’t nobody got time for that.
Not heard of that one. The main one I know is it makes towels less absorbent, my partner's mum uses it and it's like trying to soak up water with a plastic bag.
load more comments
(2 replies)
How expensive do people think fabric softener is lol. I don't use it because I don't care for it, but not buying it because you're too poor sounds wild.
load more comments
(8 replies)
It also makes the clothes extremely flammable.
I’ve used the same three tennis balls in my dryer for about 20 years now. My clothes seem to last well, and towels remain absorbant (fabric sheets can leave a waxy residue making towels less absorbent). After reading those comments maybe I’ll try adding a few drops of a scented oil to one of the tennis balls.