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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 $$$. 🤦♀️
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!
@[email protected], saw you mention essential oils too, just a PSA.
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.
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.
If only millennials bought more fabric softener instead of avocados and coffee they would be able to afford a house.
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.
‘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.
I can assure you my gf and I both invalidated this assumption during the covid19 lockdown. I have a friend who has thick grey hair and he never ever washes it. 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.
Yeah, it’s definitely different for every person. I don’t think anyone’s going to argue with that.
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.
It doesn’t know. That’s stupid. I assume if it’s cleared by shampoo then it has an easier time excreting more. It could also be that shampoo causes it to produce more in some way chemically, or that the oil shielded it from something that causes it to produce more. I don’t know the mechanics of it, and I don’t think there’s been any research into it. All I can say is that my scalp seems to have stopped producing as much oil when I changed how I clean my hair.
I’ve seen one person post one article saying it isn’t real. I read it. It doesn’t have any research behind it. It only makes claims like the glands not having sensors. Sure, but many parts of our body perform differently based on different circumstances without sensors. To dismiss all the people with experience with no experience or evidence is pretty short-sighted. I’m sure that doctor is intelligent and knows her stuff to some extent, but she overreached with her conclusion without doing any analysis.
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.
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.
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.
Hair training is a myth, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
Duly noted, thanks.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
Ha ha… groan
I have been thinking of making my own fruit vinegar this year. Hopefully good enough to consume rather than just use for cleaning
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
O.O
That’s a terrifying amount. I use around 1/4 cup for most mid to large loads. 1/2 maaaybe if it’s a large towel load. Does the job well enough.
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.
Meh. I say you need half a cup to a cup. A splash don’t do it.
Yeah if you can use just a splash you might have water soft enough to not require anything.
1/2 cup to 1 cup is the sweet spot for my water, 1/4 cup on a very small load.
I have a water softener and it works great for how the clothes feel from the wash. The half cup I add is mainly for odor eliminating.
Isn’t vinegar used to remove fabric softener
Please don’t do this. It seems like a hack, but will mess up your machine bc of how corrosive the vinegar is. Learned this the hard way.
If your clothes really need it, just soak them in a bath of diluted vinegar for a while, then rinse and wash.
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.
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?
I’ve read that the homemade laundry soap is actually soap, not detergent, and that it will over time ruin your machine.
So, I’ve just continued buying laundry detergent and have just used a fraction of what the instructions advise. It’s worked for me. I don’t buy softener or sheets. Couldn’t afford it if I wanted to. But I do have oxyclean on hand only for when I’ve forgotten a load in the washer until it’s stinky or when I wash the dog bed covers or whatever.
Yeah… Especially if you have a high efficiency machine. Washing machines use a lot less water than back when these “recipes” were actually practical. So if you utilize shaved bar soap and borax, you’re not only going to be leaving residue to build up in your machine, you’re going to have it build up in your clothes as well.
Also, a lot of people are sensitive to borax. The reason they don’t use it in regular detergent as an agitator is because it can cause rashes for a large percentage of the population.
Edited: spelling corrections
Regular laundry detergent leaves residue as well, that’s why a lot of washers have self clean cycles.
Vinegar will cut most residues from a washer. It’s one of the reasons it works as a softener, it removes detergent residue and minerals from hard water to make your clothes soft. As a side note a lot fabric softeners does the same thing by coating this fibres of the clothes in refined beef fat.
If you want a really clean machine (specific to most HE washers) put half a teaspoon of TSP(trisodium phosphate) in the empty drum of the machine and another half teaspoon where you put your detergent, fill the bleach cup and the fabric softener cup with vinegar. Set the machine to run a pre wash cycle then a heavy duty cycle on the hottest water temp(if there is a hot tap that is after your clothes washer in the pipeline, you can run that tap until it gets hot before starting the washer. HE washers use a lot less water so most of the time they are filling with cold water before the hot water rescues the machine) and as many extra rinses as your machine will allow.
After the TSP removes most of the residue, it’s rinsed away and then the bleach cup of vinigar is released with the next rinse cycle. Since TSP is basic and the vinegar is acidic they react and the TSP is neutralized, this may lead to some deposits of various salts(depending on the exact reaction ratio, if there is an excess of vinigar then the acidic solution will help prevent the salts from depositing.
When the fabric softener cup of vinigar is released in the next rinse we ensure that all acidic solution is flushed through the machine. This again will help with any salt deposits and help clean any of the remaining residue that reacts better to the acidic solution.
Any extra rinses after that help make sure that anything that can be washed away will be. Your washer will be very clean inside.
TSP can be purchased at the hardware store for cleaning surfaces before you paint them, just make sure it’s actually TSP and not a TSP replacement. Half a teaspoon of TSP in with your dish soap will make you love your dishwasher again. A little goes a long way, and using less TSP is more likely to give you a good result than using more.
That enormous rant aside, I have used homemade laundry soap recipes in several HE machines including two combination washer dryers(where the washing drum is the same as the drying drum, looks like a single HE machine, not a stacked washer and dryer) and in general those machines have more residue problems. I haven’t really had any issues. That might be related to the fact that I do not put an excess of soap or detergent into the machine, again often less is more, and if you need better cleaning it’s better to do a prewash cycle than add more detergent into the main cycle. More detergent =/= better cleaning, just more residue. Try washing a dish by hand with only liquid dish soap, no water, no damp sponge, just soap and a dry brush or dishcloth. While this is an extreme example, it does help illustrate that detergents or soaps allow grease and grime to be dissolved into water, and that’s what allows it to clean effectively, the soap or detergent is just there to get stuff into the water.
Borax sensitivity is a legit concern.
For those rare times I forget a load in the washer and it sours, I generally use a little vinegar.
I grew up watching my Mother make “laundry soap” from scratch as a kid. She would make a batch every fall from basically the tallow from the cow we home butchered for the winter and lye. I still remember that brown colored hard lump of soap and the wringer/washer she had. She would carve thin pieces off into the tub while it was agitating wait for a few minutes, then toss the clothes in to wash tub. There was no fancy detergent metering devices or small amounts of water. Even her first modern “spin dry” washer didn’t have detergent dispensers. You simply poured the detergent directly on top of the clothes in the tub.
Modern washers are designed specifically to use liquid soaps or the pods. Though when using powders by pouring them directly into the tub won’t cause anymore harm to the machine than any liquid will. Though you should probably use a longer wash cycle to make sure the powder dissolves completely. Back in the day, wash cycles were noticeably longer.
I used it for about 10 years. I didn’t notice any difference in my clothes or machine.
Fiance is fussy and wants Tide, so she pays for it.
Hello electricians and safety nerds. Fabric softener removes the fire rating on fire rated clothing protecting you from arc flash hazards.
I want to know more.
This is pure conjecture, but my guess is that the film of fabric softener left on the clothes would interfere with the fire retardant fibers/may be flammable itself.
From my understanding, the old fire gear I wore as a much younger man, the fabric was treated with special chemicals that could be washed out if not laundered correctly.
Yes, and it will even say so right on the tags. At least it did on the 35 year old bunker gear I wore when I was young and a volunteer fireman in my small rural town. They had special washing instructions right on a big tag sewn on the inside to the coat and pants.
