Eco-friendly laundry and why you should use Wool Dryer Balls
Doing laundry accounts for significant amount of energy use. Laundry detergents, softeners and dryer sheets can also be a large part of chemical and scent contaminants on our clothing and in our home. Ever wonder what makes that laundry scent so long lasting? Here’s a hint - you probably don’t want to know. (Because it’s not good for you, your family, or the earth.)
Over the last few years, we have been ‘cleaning up’ our laundry and bringing it back to a more natural earth friendly practice.
Thankfully it hasn’t been an expensive complicated process – rather just a simple change of routine.
This is what we’ve done:
Switched to eco-friendly laundry detergent or made our own. When we switched to eco-friendly laundry detergent, we still weren’t keen on all the plastic packaging. So, I have since started making my own, which has been a great experience. Not only is it super effective (and I wash super dirty farm clothes so I would know), but most of the ingredients come in cardboard packaging. And then I get to recycle my old plastic laundry bottles over and over again by using them to hold my homemade detergent.
Made a clothesline. Nothing beats clothes smelling like fresh air! Outside air is free and doesn’t use extra energy. We’ve got an outdoor clothesline and a clothesline strung up inside the house by our laundry. I use it for all my larger items that expend drying time, like jeans, towels, and bedding.
Always using wool dryer balls instead of dryer sheets. Wool balls reduce static and wrinkles and an added benefit is that they reduce dry time. By quite a bit! Use 3-4 balls for small to medium loads, and 6 balls for large. They are pure wool - totally natural and chemical-free, unlike dryer sheets. The awesome thing about dryer balls is that they are completely biodegradable, so when you need new ones, you can toss the old ones without guilt.
Not washing clothes every day. We’re from the farm. We know when we need to wash our clothes and it’s often – we can get pretty dirty and smelly during a workday. That said, if they aren’t dripping filth (maybe I’m exaggerating), not everything has to wash every day. You can save a lot of energy, water, and time, by waiting longer between washes. Research actually shows that we are healthier when we have grown up in an environment that is not obsessively clean or sterile. That’s kind of freeing, isn’t it?
